Buckminster Fuller and the Circular Economy

I recently read “You Belong to the Universe, Buckminster Fuller and the Future” by Jonathan Keats, who wonderfully succeeds at the task of lauding and demythologizing Fuller in parallel. In it, Keats illuminates Fuller’s background, like how he was kicked out of Harvard (twice), enlisted in the Navy, and his own self-mythologizing. In tandem Keats critiques and supplements his ideas. For example, Fuller wanted to enclose Manhattan in a geodesic dome for localized climate control, but more feasible alternatives of metroengineering include public fountains to chill the air or thermochromic tiling to reflect heat in the summer. Through Keats’ exposé on the life and work of Fuller I began to imagine alongside him how his ideas may come into fruition in the near future in the circular economy for the built environment. Through it all (the more I learn about his work), I see the need to revive the word, the career, of the comprehensive anticipatory design scientist.

In September I started my PhD at ETH Zürich in the Chair for Circular Engineering for Architecture. As it's been a few months now and people have asked me why ETH Zürich and what is the circular economy (CE), I've had to commit to some self-reflection and narrative building. The circular economy as defined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is, "a systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution." It is further broken down into three design principles:

• Eliminate?waste and pollution
• Circulate?products and materials (at their highest value)
• Regenerate?nature

Linear economy models are also referred to as take-make-consume-dispose processes, where materials are extracted, produced into a product, have a limited service life, then sit in a landfill instead of being repurposed. Our ancestors didn't have the luxuries and technologies afforded to us by the industrial revolution. Because of their limited access to resources, they were more circular in their practices by necessity. Driven by financial and environmental factors, our modern society also must start being more circular by necessity. Fuller saw this through the wave of technological development, so allow me to espouse his ideas to bulwark my own convictions for my PhD.

Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science

When I started my undergraduate studies at Georgia Tech, I was invited to participate in a new living learning community called Grand Challenges. The purpose of the program is to house freshman studying various degrees to integrate interest and expertise to critically analyze and address the wicked problems faced by our world. This was an introduction to systems-level thinking. Our group focused on capturing rainwater on the tops of skyscrapers and converting the potential energy to mechanical energy as it drains to ground level, while other groups worked on issues such as public health, electrical waste, food deserts, and the ilk.

During my Master's studies at Stanford I took a class in the d.school, an Institute focused on design thinking strategies to comprehensive problems. Again, a program recognizing and teaching skills in how we begin to tackle the most complicated problems of our modern society, ones in which many stakeholders are intertwined and incentives are competing and resources are yet depleting.

Though, these approaches are hardly novel. It was in 1950 when Buckminster Fuller first taught the Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science course at MIT. Here, his course discussed varying strategies on education, resource allocation, communication, economics, problem/solution formulation, and design. Fuller's ideas on synergetics and comprehensive anticipatory design science illustrate that he was an early systems-level thinker, acknowledging that the most complicated problems of society, such as resource depletion and designing for reuse, require a broad generalization of skills. He recognized that in an era of increasing specialization systems thinkers would necessarily emerge as leaders. To first begin to ideate a system that becomes circular, we must first begin to acknowledge the multi-disciplinary nature of the problem.

(image source: https://library.stanford.edu/node/172529)

Ephemeralization

Ephemeralization is a term coined by Fuller in 1938 in response to the pervading antithetical Malthusian world view. In a Malthusian view of the world, population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear until the population dies off. Fuller appreciated the technological advancements of the 20th century, such as developments in electricity, communications, satellites, and manufacturing. Therefore, Fuller advocated for Ephermeralization, which stated that we can do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing," (Nine Chains to the Moon, Fuller).

This rational optimism is partially what drove Fuller's continuous innovation, similarly, it drives my current research into digital tools for the circular economy of buildings, and also drives the momentum behind the meta-verse. Any consumer of science-fiction media is aware of this perceived convergence (divergence, rather) into living a digital life in parallel to our physical one. Certain laws of physics are relinquished in a meta-verse, and subsequently, key dynamics of the human experience are also relinquished.

Nevertheless, a virtual world, a digital twin of our current one, facilitates application of technologies that can enhance how we interact with the built environment. For example, at a simple level, keeping constantly-running sensors for temperature, light, and humidity informs a buildings physics model and can help the building operator optimize for reduced energy performance and enhance human comfort. We can use Virtual and Augmented Reality to interact with our projects before the expending the time and money of building them. In the case of a circular economy, we can begin to explore the application of city-level Building Information Models to understand what materials are used in what buildings at any given time. Instead of trying to find reams of old paperwork of original construction, which may not even be found, we can use these "digital twins" as a rapid visualization tool to make informed decisions on how to extract those materials to be reused.

Despite our nebulous understanding of what the meta-verse currently is, I am confident that, in my understanding of Buckminster Fuller’s philosophies, he would be just excited as me, likely significantly more, as so much potential for how we live our lives is expanded.?The meta-verse effectively allows us to run simulations of many aspects of our life to extract optimal solutions to implement in our every-day. In his later years Fuller became interested in running World Peace Games as global simulations to address problems of overpopulation and the uneven distribution of global resources. It is easy to imagine how a meta-verse is complimentary to this aim. Ephemeralization is happening. Although we must be aware of the dystopian view of a virtual world cheapening or degrading our embodied experience, let us more so become optimistic about how digital technologies will revolutionize our approaches to building in more responsible and innovative approaches.

(image source: https://pbl.stanford.edu/)

Geodesic Dome

Buckminster Fuller is perhaps most well known for popularizing the geometry of a geodesic dome, as seen at Disney's Epcot. The geodesic dome was used in his models of Earth, as shelters, and even proposed to cover all of Manhattan for optimized climate control. The geodesic dome has an incredible strength-to-weight ratio due to the arching action occurring in the cross-section of the structure combined with the rigidity of the triangular units constituting its walls. This shape has become emblematic of future-oriented designs partially because of its eccentric aesthetic and esoteric evangelists.

Our Chair has spent the last couple weeks building our flagship dome project to be debuted in February. The materials were recovered from an old Fiat factory in Geneva scheduled to be demolished. The project demonstrated both an optimization algorithm based on existing building stock as well as using engraved QR codes to house material passports to bridge the virtual and physical environments. Our dome is a case-study in material reuse with a nod to the aesthetic and structural virtues defended by Fuller, and it is a stalwart example of how databasing and computational power in the virtual world can be leveraged to facilitate a circular economy.

(Image source: https://cea.ibi.ethz.ch/)

Spaceship Earth

A foundational belief espoused by Fuller is that our universe is eternally regenerating and that humans are riding a spaceship, Spaceship Earth, through this universe. Humans have made a profound impact on this spaceship and we must learn to be responsible in how we treat each system we effect or develop on this planet, because, after all, we only have one spaceship. The globe's interdependent systems are the foundational drivers to a synergistic circular economy. Another of Fuller's inventions, or "artifacts" as he called them, is a map projection he called the Dymaxion Map, which displayed all land masses as continuous, emphasizing humanity's connectedness and synergetics.

A great example of Fuller’s systems view of the world and one of his more interesting projects to me was the Geoscope constructed at Cornell University in 1952. Fuller was also interested in what we now call big data and data visualization, and the intent for the Geoscope was to display the earth as a connected landmass with displayed resources and infrastructure across the planet. Fuller believed that most global development problems can be solved with global optimization of resource allocation. How do we connect areas of the world of resources surplus with those of resource demand?

(image source: https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/full-scale)

This project was focused primarily on data visualization for raw materials, but what if we extended this project into visualization of extracted materials, or building materials in situ? At city levels, state levels, or regional levels, can we understand what materials have already been extracted to better visualize material availability for reuse? Perhaps, this can be extended into a virtual reality for even more rapid visualization and comprehension! Fuller was interested in utilizing global mapping and game theory for matching stakeholders to resources; it is a feasible vision in how this might be extended into a future circular economy.

Conclusion

As I dive further into the state of research and practice of circular economic principles for the built environment, I continue to appreciate the grandiosity of the problem and requisite equivalent comprehensiveness of the solution. Fuller, as an architect, a futurist, and systems-level thinker, continues to inspire me to think broadly about new approaches to our global resource management. Through my PhD studies I strive to become an expert in the field of technological approaches for reusing building components, but I believe my competencies would be rendered useless if I am unable to also successfully think like a comprehensive anticipatory design scientist. From doing more with less to large-scale material visualization, we can continue to learn from the thinkers of our past to inspire our solutions of the future.

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