QI The Book of the Dead

space is a sphere, because it uses the least possible surface area of any three-dimensional shape. In the back of his mind were the yurt-shaped roof of his Dymaxion house and the twenty equilateral triangles on the surface of the Dymaxion globe. Then came his ‘eureka’ moment. What if he built a sphere out of triangular planes? Wouldn’t that have the spatial capacity of a sphere and the strength of a pyramid? And so it was that, one summer evening at Black Mountain, Fuller and his students took a pile of wooden slats and built the world’s first geodesic dome.

    It was an approximation of a sphere made out of triangular planes and then cut in half – and it was the perfect structure: the largest possible volume of interior space with the least amount of surface area, offering huge savings on materials and cost. The ratios were simple and beautiful: double the dome’s diameter, and its footprint on the ground quadrupled while its volume grew eight times larger. It was also extremely stable and, because air could circulate freely inside, up to 30 per cent more efficient to heat than a conventional rectangular building. Fuller called it ‘geodesic’ because a ‘geodesic line’ is the shortest distance between any two points on a sphere (from the Greek, geodaisia , meaning ‘dividing the earth’). Most remarkable of all was this: proportionally speaking, the larger the dome, the cheaper, lighter and stronger it became.
    The first commercial application of Fuller’s design came in 1953. The Ford Motor Company commissioned a geodesic dome to cover the central courtyard of its Rotunda building in Dearborn, Michigan. The US military followed with a second order and soon the world went dome-crazy. His immediate success turned Buckminster Fuller into a household name and even made him some money. He took out the patent in 1954, but always refused to set up as the exclusive manufacturer. When asked why he said:
    Whatever I do, once done, I leave it alone. Society comes along in due course and needs what I have done. By then, I’d better be on to something else. It is absolutely fundamental for me to work and design myself out of business .
     
    There are now over 500,000 geodesic structures across the world, including the Eden Project in Cornwall and the Houston Astrodome in Texas.

    Fuller’s inspiration for the dome was the way in which the protons, neutrons and electrons of the atom fit together to create matter. In fact, he came to believe that the natural geometry of the whole universe is based on arrays of interlocking tetrahedra. He already had seen how the light-but-strong structure was used all over nature: in the cornea of the eye, in the shape of some viruses, and even in the configuration of the testicles. In 1985 his discovery was to receive the ultimate endorsement when a team of scientists in Houston, Texas, discovered a new class of carbon molecule (C60) shaped exactly like a geodesic sphere. Its discovery won them the Nobel Prize and they named the molecule ‘buckminsterfullerene’ (or the ‘buckyball’). It is the third known form of pure carbon in nature, after diamond and graphite.
    More recently, buckminsterfullerene has been found in meteorites that date from the time of the earth’s formation, suggesting that the elements needed for life originated in space – something that Fuller himself had long believed.
    The later years of Fuller’s life were spent travelling back and forth across the world lecturing and inspiring people, particularly the young. He could talk for ten hours at stretch, without notes, and would wear three watches, reminding him of the time where he was, where he was going and at home. He was on tour in 1983 when he learned that the cancer his wife was suffering from had worsened. Anne had been in a deep coma for some time when he made it back to her bedside. As he held her hand, Fuller felt her move. ‘She is squeezing my hand!’ he exclaimed. Still holding her hand, he stood up, and immediately suffered a massive heart attack. He died soon afterwards, ‘with an exquisitely happy smile on his face’, according to his daughter. Anne, his wife of sixty-seven years, died a few hours later.

    Way to go. Fuller’s inventions may not yet have transformed our daily lives like Nikola Tesla’s or even Bill Gates’s. We don’t live in Fuller-designed houses or drive Dymaxion cars – and geodesic domes have a tendency to leak. None of this would have troubled