Toward a World That Works for Everyone

Part 1: The Legacy of Richard Buckminster Fuller

By Thomas T. K. Zung & William McDonough

Proposed author: Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus, Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford University

The legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller cannot be measured by his inventions. The Dymaxion House, the Geodesic Dome, the 28 patents, as audacious as they were, are only traces of the enduring influence of his work. What matters most about Bucky Fuller is the power of his ideas and the acuity of his perceptions. For what Fuller saw with remarkable clarity was how human designs could orchestrate the energies of the universe to enhance the future of life. The key lay in the universal principles that govern Nature’s design. By applying them to human endeavors “world-around,” by learning to tap the power of the “eternally regenerative universe”, the energy of the sun, wind, and waves; the vital synergies of biochemistry, the dynamics of photosynthesis, we could design, Fuller said, “a world that works for everyone.” A world of abundance rather than scarcity. A world of technologies that support life rather than sow destruction.

This vision, revolutionary in Fuller’s day, and illuminated in ours by Stanford University’s Fuller Archive, still offers an inspiring view of humanity’s place in the world. Indeed, it is the often unacknowledged forbear of a very contemporary, and very incomplete, cultural shift toward the ideas and values we have come to call sustainability. In the emergence of this new perspective, from the global accounting of material and energy flows to the technologically advanced practices of ecological design, one can see echoes of Fuller’s vision. Far from being obsolete, it is an energetic, 21st century force, a legacy finding its fullest expression in the things we make today.

Consider, for example, the way in which Fuller’s intuitive grasp of the structure of life resonates in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Throughout his career, Fuller developed architectural concepts from the structural principles of nature. One such principle, tensegrity, a discontinuous-compression, continuous-tension system that grew out of Fuller’s work with artists like Richard Smithson and his observations of the behavior of gas molecules in balloons and herring in fish nets, gives his geodesic domes their surpassing lightness, stability and strength. In 1985, future Nobel Prize laureates Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley validated Fuller’s insight when they recognized that the atoms of the newly discovered C60 molecule were bonded together in the shape of a geodesic dome. They named the molecule the buckminsterfullerene, Kroto would later write, “because the geodesic ideas associated with the constructs of Buckminster Fuller had been instrumental in arriving at a plausible structure.” As E. J. Applewhite has noted, the discovery of C60 confirmed Fuller’s “intuitions that geodesic design plays a more significant role in nature’s arrangements than had hitherto been recognized.” Indeed, C60 is “ancient and ubiquitous,” its symmetrical microstructure a “universal design in the material world of nature.” It is also, as Fuller imagined, light, strong and stable, making the fullerene a fundamental building block of nanometer-scale molecular engineering. Today, engineers are working with buckyballs and buckytubes to create a material fifty to one hundred times stronger than steel at about one sixth the weight. In medicine, microbiologists have suggested that buckyballs may one day be used to deliver medication directly to diseased tissues and cells. The microbiologist Dr. Donald E. Ingber perhaps best sums up Fuller’s intuitive genius: “Cell biologists like myself literally have observed molecular geodesic domes within the skeletal framework of living cells. We have discovered that the basic architectural principle of tensegrity that Fuller explored in theoretical terms…guides biological organization, from the simplest carbon molecules (Bucky Balls) to the most complex living organisms. In other words, Fuller’s vision of Nature and the Universe was crystal clear.”

Fuller’s clear-sightedness also illuminated two other influential concerns that run parallel to his search for universal design principles: the synergistic behavior of whole systems and the practice of design science. Like the concept of tensegrity, each reflects Fuller’s basic assumptions about the nature of Nature: the universe is regenerative and exquisitely designed; “our minds are designed to know the design”; by making “the design” operational we can create regenerative technologies that protect and nurture human life. Synergetics, a “geometry of thinking” that starts with wholes rather than parts, was Fuller’s way of describing Nature’s design comprehensively. Design science, what he called “comprehensive, anticipatory design science”, applies synergetic thinking to meeting human needs; it is a strategic, whole systems approach to anticipating global problems and addressing them through the practice of intelligent design. As Fuller said, “The proper goal of the architect-engineer is purposeful.”

These ideas laid the foundation of what is called “sustainable” architecture, and they are alive today in the aspirations of architects who seek to build a human habitat that is in harmony with Nature, who apply technology and design to generating social well-being, environmental health, and peaceful prosperity. This is the living legacy of Buckminster Fuller. Stanford University’s “Twelve Degrees of Freedom: Buckminster Fuller’s Twentieth Century” explores some of the critical ways in which it is being made manifest in the purposeful, forward-looking works of the architects and designers of our time.

Part 2: Form Follows Evolution

A Manifesto on 21st Century Architecture

By Lord Norman Foster & William McDonough

The need to create a mutually beneficial relationship between humanity and the rest of the living biosphere has never been more urgent. In its report Global Outlook 2000, the United Nations offered a stark picture of a planet wracked by water shortages, global warming, and pollution. However, while the world is rapidly changing, we are scarcely prepared. Indeed, one of the UK’s leading newspapers, The Independent, has gone so far as to suggest that the only response to rising energy consumption and environmental degradation is the wholesale adoption of nuclear power. It is a measure of just how little is generally understood about the root causes of the looming environmental crisis. Consider this fact: in the developed world, our buildings consume half of the energy we generate and are responsible for half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, building construction and the maintenance of existing buildings accounts for one-sixth of the world’s water consumption and half of its waste stream. That situation can only worsen as the developing world catches up with us. Faced with the urgency and severity of the situation, we – the global community - have a duty to act. Those who design and commission buildings have a particularly important role to play. That responsibility to act was articulated powerfully by the American polymath Richard Buckminster Fuller, who dedicated his life to trying to raise the world’s environmental consciousness. ‘Bucky’ understood with a remarkable prescience how design could utilise the abundant energies of nature to enhance the future of what he called ‘Spaceship Earth.’ Technology, he argued, could be embraced to support life, rather than breed destruction. By learning to tap the power of the ‘eternally regenerative universe’ we could create, he said, ‘a world that works for everyone.’

And we can. Today we are developing sophisticated technologies that allow us to illuminate and power buildings with solar energy. We are designing tools to harvest renewable energy, such as wind turbines, cladding systems, and solar-assisted electric vehicles. We are creating buildings like trees that store carbon, filter water, provide habitat, and heat and cool themselves through active engagement with the local climate. And we are demonstrating the potential for virtually non-polluting, wholly sustainable public buildings, big, culturally rich, public buildings, that generate more energy than they consume and power neighbouring buildings with their surplus. This is what Bucky called ‘comprehensive, anticipatory design science’.

Following Bucky, our sense of the comprehensive is expansive. It suggests the desire to illuminate connections, cross boundaries, and integrate ecological design and technology into artistic expression. As Bucky’s long-time colleague Glenn Olds noted, his sense of comprehensive implied ‘a combination of sensitivity and compassion, a dynamic grasp of the aesthetic and the technical, the appreciative and descriptive, the pattern of the whole and its process.’ This is an appropriate perspective for architects today. Just as the technological cannot be separated from the humanistic, the individual building cannot be detached from its local or global environment. Architecture, by definition, is comprehensive.

Design science proceeds from this view with the intention of anticipating and attending to the needs of the future by creating buildings that generate a wide, beneficial spectrum of ecological, social and economic effects. Rather than adapting the existing systems of architecture and industry to reduce their harm, design science seeks to transform them into a regenerative force. It does so by recognizing the productive, highly effective processes of nature as both the model for human designs and the overarching context in which they operate.

Natural systems are astonishingly effective. On Earth, the sun’s abundant energy perpetually generates new growth and is transformed by photosynthesis into food for myriad living systems. Within each ecosystem, the waste of one organism provides nourishment for another; its productivity is beneficial and regenerative, waste equals food. The earth’s water, too, flows in perpetually renewing, cradle-to-cradle cycles. Together, renewable energy and the cyclical flows of nutrients and water create a magnificently effective, vital synergy. Indeed, all the processes that animate living systems are effective, cyclical, synergetic and regenerative.

By emulating natural systems, by applying the cradle-to-cradle principles of ecology to design, architecture, too, can be regenerative. Instead of simply polluting less, we can create buildings so in tune with their surroundings they purify the air and water. Instead of simply being more energy efficient, buildings can produce more energy than they require. Instead of reducing waste, design can eliminate the concept of waste, producing perpetual assets rather than perpetual liabilities. And instead of being reductive, design can be synergetic: creating buildings that are socially, economically and ecologically advanced.

To have a truly regenerative impact, however, it is imperative that our vision not be limited to buildings alone, for everything we create, materials, products, buildings, energy systems, manufacturing processes, public infrastructure, urban and regional plans, can be designed to support and celebrate both human creativity and the life of the biosphere.

A coherent framework for activating regenerative design in all sectors of society rests on universal principles, locally applied. Though one finds all manner of insights when applying the intelligence of natural systems to human designs, three key principles stand out as the essential building blocks of a robust, comprehensive, regenerative design paradigm: waste equals food; use current solar income; form follows evolution. Understanding waste equals food allows us to conceive of regenerative closed-loop systems on multiple scales, from the molecular chemistry of the community garden to the material flows of the regional economy. Applied to design, waste equals food translates, first of all, into safe, healthful materials that generate no waste. Imagine a scenario in which textiles made with natural materials and safe chemicals are tossed into community gardens to nourish the soil when they wear out, becoming food for biological systems. Imagine high-tech polymers and metals designed for closed loop systems that circulate valuable materials in perpetual cycles of production, recovery and remanufacture. Evidence already exists to show that this approach is effective and profitable. Widely applied, it promises the evolution of safe manufacturing and cradle-to-cradle material flows, which not only ensure that the materials we build with are safe and beneficial, but also provide a clean, productive base for healthy economic growth. By eliminating the very concept of waste, human industry can become a regenerative thread in the fabric of the built environment.

On the scale of community design and urban planning, following the principle waste equals food allows us to “close the loop” on natural flows of water and energy. Closing the loop on water flows means designing a site in harmony with local topography, soil, and vegetation so that rainwater percolates slowly through the earth and follows a natural, restorative course through the watershed rather than racing down storm drains and culverts to a treatment plant. If a city’s water flows are conceived in this way, one can begin to imagine urban systems of green roofs, wetlands, swales and watercourses that retain and filter stormwater and in the process create networks of cherished public spaces. Frederick Law Olmsted understood this more than a century ago when he created the Fens and Riverway in Boston, which transformed a fetid swamp into an urban oasis. From this perspective, even sewage treatment can be conceived as a closed loop system of nutrient flows that generates economic assets rather than environmental liabilities. Again, evidence exists to show that this strategy can be profitable and effective: Not only have contemporary designers developed ecologically intelligent systems for closing the loop on water and nutrients, Chinese farmers have been doing it for thousands of years. Attending closely to the waste equals food principle, one also recognizes that responding effectively to the energy of the sun, which powers nature’s cradle-to-cradle cycles, is a crucial element of good design. Simply put, the sun provides the earth’s only perpetual source of energy income, and as the social and environmental costs of burning fossil fuels become more apparent every day, we ignore it at our peril. As wind power, a renewable energy driven by solar flux, and direct solar power become increasingly cost-effective, they become a crucial element of any intelligent planning scenario. In short, use current solar income.

Solar architecture, however, is a lot more subtle and sophisticated than an array of technology on the roof. While many still hold the view of the world renowned modernist who said, “solar energy has nothing to do with architecture,” even a cursory look at architectural history, from the Roman Pantheon to the vernacular tradition, reveals that architects have always been engaged in developing beautiful, effective, culturally rich ways to design buildings in harmony with the movement of the sun.

Consider Vitruvius. The 1st century Roman master’s encyclopedic treatise on architecture, engineering and city planning, hugely influential in his time, in the Renaissance, and again in Jefferson’s America, contained whole chapters on the profound significance of the sun’s movement in relation to the location of rooms, the size of apertures, thermal mass and so on. Meanwhile, the vernacular tradition has always understood light and mass; it has always created a native architectural language, a response to place fundamental to the practice of architecture.

Today, our dialogue with sunlight can be informed by both traditions, and by our increasing ability to use technology and design, sky gardens, solar chimneys, mobile shades, light-reflecting cupola’s, building form, to not only harvest the energy of the sun but to create building systems that make elegant and extensive use of natural light and ventilation. Indeed, we are rediscovering how ecological design and a formally rich aesthetic sensibility can create a wonderful synergy.

Solar design principles, too, can be applied at many scales, from dwelling to public building to commercial high rise and beyond to the energy infrastructure of entire cities and regions. In Europe, Germany has already harnessed wind power equivalent to twenty coal-fired power plants and the European Union plans to generate 22 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. In the United States, a wind generated kilowatt hour in the Midwest is now cheaper than a kilowatt hour generated by natural gas, and cities as large and influential as Chicago are making strong commitments to developing the renewable energy infrastructure. And one can begin to imagine the implications of wind-powered mass transportation in Canada, where the Calgary subway system is partially powered by prairie winds. And so it bears repeating: A dialogue with natural energy flows has a crucial place in any intelligent planning scenario. Though natural processes follow universal laws, they yield a diversity of forms. From place to place, unique local conditions generate novel responses from a multiplicity of organisms, creating interdependent systems in which each organism fits exquisitely in its niche and an abundance of “fitting” organisms thrive together. Evolution generates biodiversity. Form follows evolution.

Just so, universal principles can be effectively applied to design only through an intense engagement with place. Rather than offering Le Corbusier’s “one single building for all nations and climates,” we can design buildings and communities exquisitely suited to the character of their locale.

Designers aiming for what “fits” attend carefully to the local landscape. They study geology, hydrology, vegetation and climate. They observe the lives of local flora and fauna as well as the vernacular architecture of the region. They explore traces of natural and cultural history. Combining an understanding of building and energy systems with the site’s flows and patterns of sun, wind, water and vegetation, they engage in a dialogue with place in search of fitting forms. They understand, finally, that form follows evolution.

While Sullivan declared Form Follows Function to clarify architectural intention, he also went on to explore and celebrate in ornament the life forms evolved from a seed. Mies, with his famous maxim, Less is More, went still further to unclutter architectural theory and practice. While the buildings of Mies less talented followers may lack elegance in their relation to place, the practice of paring away to arrive at the essence of form remains a vital idea. Today, with clarity of mind and intention, with a sophisticated scientific vision that allows the structure of molecules and the dynamics of ecosystems to inform our designs, architects can begin to understand the complex nature of a particular building in a particular evolutionary matrix in a particular place in the world. Design can become a celebration not simply of human intelligence, but of our kinship with all of life. And thus, the transformation of architecture and design is not simply a technological movement; it is part of an evolving cultural phenomenon seeking to replace dominion over nature with a more fulfilling and engaged relationship with the forces of the natural world. This movement away from dominion, past simple stewardship, and toward a sense of kinship with the living earth can be a source of tremendous creativity and hope. If this century is to be known for peace, prosperity, beauty and the restoration of our world, it must become one of the foundations of our cultural life.

Architects, with their profound ability to create new, inspiring relationships to the surrounding world, are uniquely positioned to lead such a renaissance. Already, there are hints of a new engagement. And while there are myriad issues to address, these intimations of change suggest that our tragic relationship with nature in the twentieth century could well be transformed into a more hopeful one as we enter the heart of the twenty-first.

Part 3: Creating a World That Works for Everyone

A Manifesto Made Manifest: The Works of Norman Foster and William McDonough

Proposed Author: Michael Keller, Stanford University Librarian, Publisher Stanford University Press

In the works of Lord Norman Foster and William McDonough one can see the spirit of Buckminster Fuller. Norman Foster was a longtime associate of Fuller’s and has noted the profound ways in which Bucky’s ideas informed his thinking about everything from methods of research and design to the larger “themes of shelter, energy and the environment, which go to the heart of contemporary architecture.” Foster and Fuller collaborated on the design of Bucky’s double deresonated dome and his geodesic Autonomous House, an energy-self-sufficient dwelling with a rotating, sun-screening inner skin that had “more than a hint” of influence on the remarkable light-reflecting cupola that crowns Foster’s design for the rebuilt energy-self-sufficient Reichstag in Berlin.

William McDonough, meanwhile, has manifested Bucky’s exhortation to “think globally, act locally”, what McDonough now calls “thinking galactically and acting molecularly”, in the design of solar-powered buildings that intensely engage the ecology of their sites. His seminal The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability, co-authored with the German chemist Michael Braungart, was Fulleresque in its optimistic belief in design’s power to change the world and in its articulation of a design paradigm based on the universal laws of nature. His pioneering use of green roofs; renewable energy; safe, perpetually recyclable bio-based and high-tech materials; water-filtering botanical gardens; and the light of the sun to create ecologically intelligent buildings beneficially enmeshed in their surroundings shows an adept’s understanding of anticipatory design science.

To look at Foster and McDonough’s work is to see evidence that their approach to design yields dramatic results. For example, when the Reichstag – a building dating from the end of the nineteenth century – was rebuilt by Foster and Partners as the seat of the German Parliament in Berlin (1992-1999) it demonstrated the potential for a virtually non-polluting, wholly sustainable public building. It makes extensive use of natural light and ventilation, together with combined systems of cogeneration and heat recovery, and eschews fossil fuels in favour of renewable ‘bio-diesel’, a refined vegetable oil derived from grape or sunflower seeds. Heating and cooling the Reichstag by burning biodiesel has led to a ninety-four percent reduction in CO2 emissions when compared to its earlier oil-burning installations. Additionally, the building’s energy strategy ensures that the minimum energy achieves the maximum effect at the lowest possible operating cost. In fact, because its own requirements are sufficiently modest, the Reichstag is capable of generating more energy than it consumes, allowing it to perform as a local power station supplying the neighbouring buildings in the new parliamentary quarter.

In addition to forming the public focus of the building and signalling its transformation, the Reichstag’s distinctive cupola provides the key to strategies for lighting and ventilating the assembly chamber. At its heart is a light-reflecting cone, formed from faceted mirrors, that works like a lighthouse in reverse to reflect daylight from a 360-degree horizon down into the chamber. An electronically controlled mobile sunshade tracks the path of the sun to block solar gain and glare, while allowing a little sunlight to dapple the floor of the chamber. In ventilation terms, the cone performs as a solar chimney. Air is drawn up naturally through the chamber, extracted via vents in the cone and expelled through the open top of the cupola. Interestingly, the cupola echoes the Autonomous House project undertaken jointly by Bucky and the Foster studio in 1982-1983, shortly before his death. A geodesic dome-like structure with a rotating, sun-screening inner skin, the house offered a compelling vision for an energy self-sufficient solar dwelling – another example of Bucky’s maxim of ‘doing the most with the least.’

When design science creates a rapport with the environment, it also teaches us how nature works. As the educator David Orr has pointed out, architecture always serves a pedagogical function; the design of buildings silently constructs and reinforces cultural attitudes toward the environment, from the way we use energy and materials to our relationship with the landscape. These are particularly meaningful lessons in an educational setting. That is why it is especially absurd to teach young people about the world, especially young people interested in design, in buildings that devour fossil fuels, have no relation to their surroundings, are generally uncomfortable and uninspiring, and express ignorance of basic ecology.

William McDonough and Partners’ Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College addresses the shortcomings of the contemporary classroom by modelling ecological literacy. Its design began with McDonough’s astonishingly original and poetic question: ‘How can we make a building like a tree?’ The relevance of the metaphor stems from a tree’s innate ability to absorb carbon, produce oxygen, distil water, build soil, accrue solar income as food and fuel, create habitat, change with the seasons, self-replicate, and engender aesthetic delight. By conceiving the building as a living element within the landscape, his concept and design for the Lewis Center establishes creative, interactive relationships between human activity and the natural cycles of nature. Its impact on the Oberlin campus is both naturally and socially regenerative.

The building’s integrated energy strategy includes harvesting the sun’s energy by means of rooftop solar cells, maximizing the use of daylight throughout the building, and using geothermal wells for heating and cooling. This reliance on natural energy flows will allow the Center to evolve into a net energy exporter. The building also relies on natural systems to purify its wastewater, which is filtered through a system of botanical gardens that breaks down and digests organic material and releases clean, safe water. Materials, too, were chosen to promote long-term human and ecological health. The carpets are conceived as a product of service, a concept pioneered by Michael Braungart and McDonough in the 1980s and now being vigorously adopted by leading manufacturers, which will be returned to their manufacturer and recycled into new carpet when they are removed from the building. The upholstery fabric used to cover the chairs is a blend of pesticide-residue-free wool and organically grown ramie, dyed and processed entirely with non-toxic chemicals, which when it wears out, can be used as mulch for the Center’s orchard, returning its biological nutrients to the soil. The Lewis Center has become the home of a lively learning community. While the atrium at the building’s core enriches its social character, functioning as a ‘town hall’ for Oberlin’s southern campus, the Center’s overall design provides ample opportunities for discovering how nature works. Perhaps the most moving lesson the building imparts is that the human presence in the environment can be regenerative. Not simply benign or less bad, but positive, vital and good. This is not a rhetorical lesson. At Oberlin, habits of mind grow out of daily interactions with wind, water, soil, and trees, as well as with technologically sophisticated building and energy systems; these become the skills and knowledge that inform the comprehensive designers of the future. It is perhaps the kind of education students might receive at Fuller’s ideal centre of higher learning, ‘the University of the Universe.’

The Reichstag and the Lewis Center both illustrate how buildings do not have to be voracious energy consumers, or large-scale polluters, but can create a wide spectrum of positive effects. Such buildings can be exemplars of architectural design, technological innovation, and sustainable design that celebrate nature, culture, and democratic aspirations. While these buildings represent an essential first step toward a sustainable future, imagine the potential impact of these strategies if they were applied globally.

By tracing the influence of R. Buckminster Fuller’s work on the practice of contemporary design science, nanotechnology, and sustainability, this exhibition sponsored by Stanford University’s Fuller Archive measures the profound impact of his thought on our twenty-first century world. As Nobel Laureate Robert Curl said, “No aware person could live for decades in the twentieth century without meeting Fuller many times in his work.”

Meeting the full breadth of Fuller’s genius, “Twelve Degrees of Freedom: Buckminster Fuller’s Twentieth Century” illuminates the multitudinous ways in which the design revolution he initiated is only now beginning to realize its enormous creative potential and change the way we live.

In Fuller’s own words: “I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reduction to physical practice to reform the environment instead of trying to reform man. I can prove to young people that it’s completely possible to take care of all humanity at a higher standard of living than anyone ever thought of; that the war which they deplore is the same as other wars, which have been based on the assumption that there is not enough to go around, so that somebody is going to have to die. But that is no longer true. If you can go to the moon and under the Arctic ice, you can make the world work. Whether humanity is to continue to comprehensively prosper on Spaceship Earth depends entirely on the integrity of the human individual and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked: Are humans worthwhile to Universe invention?”