Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 38

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

0.2 linear_foot (1 box)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Ms. Coll. 38, R. Buckminster Fuller, 4D, 1928, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1928 (inclusive)

Creator:

Fuller, R. Buckminster (Richard Buckminster)

Form:

Architectural drawings (visual works) and Writings (documents)

Abstract:

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), better known as R. Buckminster Fuller, was an American architect, designer, inventor, theorist, and writer. This collection consists of an inscribed copy of 4D which introduced his ideas for a new type of low-cost, mass-produced housing.

R. Buckminster Fuller was born July 12, 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts. The son of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews, Fuller was educated at Harvard University and served in the Navy during World War I. After being discharged in 1919, he joined a company architect James Monroe Hewlett. In 1927, he began developing "Dymaxion" proposals, forming a company called 4D and developing a Ten Deck building, a Word Town plan, and the Minimum Dymaxion house, a hexagonal duralumin unit suspended by cables from a central supporting mast. In the early 1930s, he developed a three-wheeled Dymaxion car, and then a pre-fabricated Dymaxion bathroom.

From 1948 to 1949, Fuller taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, working with students and colleagues to work with the geodesic dome (Fuller was awarded the United States patents, even though the dome had been patented in Germany in 1925). In the years that followed, Fuller continued to work to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty. Throughout the course of his life Fuller held 28 patents, authored 28 books, received 47 honorary degrees. He died on July 1, 1983.

This single volume consists of mimeographed copies of typescript text and hand-drawn illustrations. This volume appears to be the precursor of the 1930 publication, 4D, in which he introduced his ideas for a new type of low-cost, mass-produced housing. The volume is inscription by Fuller: To My dear friends The Fellers.