HTI3 - Journal Week 14 'Art Science Museum'

Fig. 01 - An image of Richard Buckminister Fuller stsanding infront of a geodesic dome (source: https://media.wired.com/photos/592718a57034dc5f91beda18/master/pass/Buckminster_Fuller-BE043654.jpg)

Richard Buckminister Fuller (Fig. 01) was visionary and a well-known 20th century inventor born on 12 July 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts. It was a mission for him to dedicate his life into his work of coming up with solutions in order to make the world work 100% for humanity. He used the convergence of design and science as a form of problem solving.

Fig. 02 - The Dymaxion House (source: https://www.weirduniverse.net/images/2009/dymaxion_house.jpg)

Buckminister Fuller came up with the idea in 1920s of a Dymaxion House (Fig. 02) for a single-family house with a self-sufficient building. The idea of a Dymaxion House is to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques and to provide affordable housing with the ease of shipment and assembly. He first thought up of several forward-thinking designs using materials that were new, including aluminum as they were easily accessible and innovations including wind turbines on the roof the allow ventilation and a system to collect recycle rainwater.

Fig. 03 - The Silk Pavilion by the group at MIT Media Lab (source: https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/51b0/f8a1/b3fc/4b22/5b00/0236/large_jpg/Steven_Keating_1.jpg?1370552478)

One of the people who Buckminster Fuller influenced heavily is an American-Israeli designer who is a professor at the MIT Media Lab where she led the Mediated Matter research group. One of the projects that her team came up with was the Silk Pavilion (Fig. 03), inspired by the silkworm's ability to generate a three-dimensional cocoon out of a single silk thread. Other biophilic opportunities that I am able to imagine to help build "immediate shelters" for the homeless are using leaves that are placed in the similar shape of the geodesic dome to create a weather proof shelter for people who are homeless and in need of a place to stay as it is easily maintained, environmentally friendly, and can be taken down and replaced easily.

Fig. 04 - A geodesic dome designed by Buckminister Fuller for the United States pavilion at the Montreal Expo (source: https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/976x549/p020y545.jpg)

A geodesic dome (Fig. 04) is a product of Buckminster Fuller's experiments with tensegrity and endless studies of the rules of geometry. Geodesic lines are the shortest possible path between two points on a sphere and Buckminster Fuller had a theory that this principle could be taken advantage of to design an incredibly efficient and stable form as geodesic structures are self-supporting, with no need for foundations, and are able to cover a large surface area with minimum amount of material needed. I learned from it's structure that there's always a more efficient ways of doing things as long as we put in enough research as Buckminster Fuller's idea of ephemeralisation is to do, "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing".

Fig. 05 - Sketches of Moshe Safdie ideas for the Artscience Museum in Singapore (source: own image)

Moshe Safdie, born in 14 July 1938, is an architect with Isreali, Canadian, and American citizenship. He designed the ArtScience Museum in Singapore with 'biomimetic' inspirations for the buliding. Moshe Safdie is influenced by Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car which highlights the contemporary approach of biomimetic design of a fish. The complex geometry of ArtScience Museum is shaped by combining a varity of curved geometric shapes that raises associations of lotus flowers, mangrove plants, and even of the human hands.

Fig. 06 - Multiple models that represents tensegrity (source: own image)

Tensegrity is of central importance to Buckminister Fuller as it was the notion of "synergy'. Synergy is the behaviour of complete systems that cannot be predicted from the behaviour of any of the individual parts. It allowed Buckminister Fuller's vision of the universe to be translated sustainably into the real world as for him, synergy was both his practice and vision. In order to visualize this in a more functional form, Buckminister Fuller applied geometry to it and created another one of his key concepts 'tensegrity'. It is a portmanteau of 'tension' and 'integrity'. With tensegrity, Buckminister Fuller is able to create a new kind of architecture and extraordinary stuctures that maintained their stability or integrity through continual tension which includes the placing of rigid elements in space solely through tension and compression. Tensegrity can also be seen in human relationship structure as there is a push and pull, back and forth, give and take energies that constantly influence and shape the system which in turn, consciously or unconsciously keeping the connections alive and vital. Metaphorically, the idea of tensegrity shows the combination of balance and wits that humans are able to comprehend and come up with solutions for problems that seem unsolvable.

Fig. 07 - The Triton City designed by Buckminister Fuller (source: https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/fs/9f1a7827977871.56051eee4275e.jpg)

The Triton City Model (Fig. 07) is a concept for an anchored city located floating offshore and connected with bridges to the mainland. It is a collection of tetrahedronal structures that contains neighbourhood of apartments, schools, a supermarket and a few speciality shops. This concept reminds me of Kampung Admiralty located in Singapore which is an integrated public development of healthcare, hawker centre, commercial, and community centre underneath the apartments made for the elderly to live in. Where the elderly living there would not have to travel far to use the amenities as it is easily accessible.

Fig. 08 - "Mini Earth" model shown during Artscience Museum (source: own image)

The "Mini Earth" (Fig. 08) which is located at the UN building was created in a way to give the world an unbiased view of the Earth. Typical maps made by different countries often have a bias of their own country drawn as the biggest or in the center of the page which often distort and skew visions of other countries. These biased maps are not useful in helping to solve world problems that affects the entire planet as a whole. Therefore, the Mini Earth was introduced to present a more comprehensive view of Earth to ensure each and every country are seen as equals on the map.