Buckminster Fuller

Less is More

It took seven hours to build R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller’s home in Carbondale. The new home used the conservationist design that had made Fuller famous—a geodesic dome that was easy to build, could withstand great weights, and required few resources. Comprised of 60 isosceles-triangle plywood panels, Fuller’s unique Carbondale home was the only dome he ever lived in and owned. The one downside to the geodesic home, his wife Anne claimed, was that “you could not hang paintings because they would be just sort of dangling out from the curve.”

Though Fuller’s design is most recognized as the key feature of Walt Disney’s Epcot Center, the geodesic dome was only part of Fuller’s larger vision for humanity. He was adamant that “man can be a success on this planet” and Earth’s resources were adequate to take care of everyone who called it home for generations to come.

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Fuller Design Model

A model of Fuller’s design for a geodesic sphere created by Charles B. Ryan, a professor at the University of Oregon, in collaboration with Fuller in the 1960s.

Courtesy of Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale