Do More With Less. Buck The System!
If ever there was an idea 'whose time has come', it is this: "doing more with less". In this 22nd issue, we explore the design philosophy accredited to a man hailed as “one of the greatest minds of our times”, one Richard Buckminster Fuller.. a.k.a. 'Bucky' Fuller, and contemplate ways to apply Do More With Less in developing our idea/s & living our lives.
If you're new to us it is recommended that you read issue 1:?One Idea is All it Takes
About:?Trevor Nel is an 'ideas-generating machine' and co-founder of?WISDOMS?. You can connect with WISDOMS? and become: 1. a?PATRON?and/or; 2. a?PLAYER?, and/or; 3. a?PARTNER?- follow each link for more info.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.?To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller
I bumped into the innovative ideas of Bucky Fuller on a first visit to Spaceship Earth at EPCOT, Disney World, Orlando, Florida,?USA., back in the early '90s. Jackie Craven writes: 'The enormous AT&T Pavilion at Epcot in Disney World is perhaps the world's most famous structure modeled after Fuller's geodesic dome.. there's no question that this Disney icon is "Bucky's" brainchild.'
Featured on Time Magazines cover - R. Buckminster Fuller?|?Jan. 10,?1964 - with the cover story entitled - Design: The Dymaxion American - we read: 'For most of his life, R. Buckminster Fuller was known simply as a crackpot.. Today Richard Buckminster Fuller, 68, of Carbondale, Ill. — whose college career never got beyond his freshman midyears—is famous for houses that fly and bathrooms without water, for cars and maps and ways of living bearing the mysterious word "Dymaxion," for things called "octet trusses," "synergetics" and "tensegrity." But he is best known of all for his massive mid-century breakthrough known as the "geodesic dome." '
We read further (pg.5) of derivatives of his philosophy as being: "maximum gain of advantage from the minimal energy input." And on pg.10 we read of Fuller's prescient vision: "Do you remember as a child what it was like playing house out in the woods? It was exciting. It was wonderful—until it rained. Well, I could build you that house today, where the sunlight would come through just as in the forest. A house with no walls, no doors, no windows—only paths of green ferns and green trees through a rainbow of flowers. And it would never rain. I call this house 'the Garden of Eden." Fuller visualizes his Garden of Eden as a dome within a dome.
Fast-forward to the end of the century and we find Bucky Fuller's vision being given form in The Eden Project located in Cornwall, South West England, U.K.
The Eden Project Built a Rainforest Ecosystem Inside Buckminster Fuller-Inspired Geodesic Domes - Extract: 'The project also represents a poignant personal vindication for the Fuller family. Fuller “vowed to dedicate his life to improving standards of living through good design,”?The Guardian?writes, after his daughter Alexandra died in 1922. In 2009, his only surviving child, Allegra Fuller Snyder, then 82 and Chairwoman of the Buckminster Fuller Institute,?visited the Eden Project. “Of all the projects related to my father’s work,” she remarked afterward, “I would say that this is the one I am most aware of as being a powerful, comprehensive project…. My father would have been just thrilled. He would feel that it is a marvelous application of his thinking.” '
That first trip to Disney World had me entranced with Fuller's work on Synergistic Relationships between angles in design structures, that I tweaked many years ago in Confessions Of A SERIAL Entrepreneur Ch.3 to read:
Buckminster Fuller – America’s super-inventor, of Epcot Centre: Geodesic Dome fame – gave scientific meaning to Napoleon Hill’s claim: ‘A group of brains coordinated in a spirit of harmony will provide more thought energy than a single brain.’
Adapting Bucky Fuller’s formula for Synergistic Relationships (replacing N with P):?(P2 – P)/2 = S?(where P stands for the number of People in a group and S stands for the resultant potential Synergistic Relationships) - showed that 10 people at a table have 45 possible relationships, 100 people in a room have 4950 possible relationships, and 1000 people in a business forum have 499 500 possible relationships.
The Time Magazine cover article of Jan. 10 1964 concludes: 'Bucky's peculiar distinction is that, while many of his fellow intellectuals are depressed by the "materialistic" 20th century, he is exhilarated. He is excited by "humanity's epochal graduation from the inert, materialistic 19th century into the dynamic, abstract 20th century." He feels that there is an "important reorientation of mankind, from the role of an inherent failure, as erroneously reasoned by Malthus, and erroneously accepted by the bootstrap-anchored custodians of civilization's processes, to a new role for mankind, that of an inherent success." He is sure the whole world can be fed, housed and happy, if designers can just put to work all the world's skills with Fuller-like efficiency. He is endlessly excited by the massive strides mankind has made in just the last 50 years, of which one of the most dramatic has been the increase in range of the average man's "toing and froing." For thousands of years primitive man traveled on foot by necessity, never covered more than an estimated 300 miles in his entire lifetime. Even with the coming of the horse and later the railroad, as late as 1900, the average man was still traveling no more than 30,000 miles in his entire lifetime. This is less than 1 % of Bucky's own travels. Jetting around as he does, Bucky has already covered 1,500,000 miles, though he started his serious traveling career only five years ago.'
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..never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. Buckminster Fuller
Documentary film: The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller plus radio interview of producer Sam Green talking about the documentary. This neat pic of the Time magazine cover Jan. 10 1964 appears on Sam Green's blog:
To conclude: Below are links to how others have interpreted their philosophies of Do More With Less. How can you apply tweaks of their concepts to your idea/s & life?
Link: Do More With Less Film - 'Do More With Less is a conversation between over 100 hikers traveling from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. Throughout the 2,660 miles and endless challenges the community talks about hiking, abandoning the grid, and how to live an adventurous lifestyle.'
I think one key part of doing more with less is to be more strategic, to realize what the objectives you're truly trying to accomplish are and then to drive with greater focus towards those objectives - Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
Link: Do More With Less Latin America architecture documentary - a 2-minute short documentary showing how Latin American architecture students work with material found in local surrounds to create memorable low-cost architecture. 'By 2030, two billion people are expected to be living in slums. Therefore learn how to operate in conditions with low capital resources, giving an answer to the economy from the local is the great challenge. Do More With Less is a documentary that sets the attention in Latin American architecture because its context of constant crisis compels the discipline to reinvent itself and to seek innovation in local resources.'
Remember..?just one idea is all it takes.
Next week:?issue 23 - We explore the idea-generating mindset of Elon Musk.
Trevor Nel?is author of?One Idea Is All It Takes?and numerous publications & articles, including:
Note to self. Must visit the Eden Project. In our life journey can we end where we started as innocent infants, through knowledge gained as we matured, to an Edenic state. This is route mapped out by the authors of the World Transformation Movement citing many lyrics from songs written by the likes of John Lennon (Imagine) and Bono.