Editing Buckminster Fuller (section)

=== Geodesic domes ===

Fuller taught at [[Black Mountain College]] in [[North Carolina]] during the summers of 1948 and 1949,<ref name="ExhibitBMC">{{cite web|url=http://blackmountaincollege.org/content/view/45/60/ |title=IDEAS + INVENTIONS: Buckminster Fuller and Black Mountain College, July 15 – November 26, 2005 |work=Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center |date=2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090115004344/http://blackmountaincollege.org/content/view/45/60/ |archive-date=January 15, 2009 }}</ref> serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949. Fuller had been shy and withdrawn, but he was persuaded to participate in a theatrical performance of [[Erik Satie|Erik Satie's]] ''[[Le piège de Méduse]]'' produced by [[John Cage]], who was also teaching at Black Mountain. During rehearsals, under the tutelage of [[Arthur Penn]], then a student at Black Mountain, Fuller broke through his inhibitions to become confident as a performer and speaker.<ref>{{cite book | last = Segaloff | first = Nat | title = Arthur Penn: American director | publisher = University Press of Kentucky | location = Lexington, Ky | year = 2011 | pages = 27–28 | isbn = 978-0813129761 }} Available as a .pdf at https://epdf.pub/arthur-penn-american-director-screen-classics.html</ref>

At Black Mountain, with the support of a group of professors and students, he began reinventing a project that would make him famous: the [[geodesic dome]]. Although the geodesic dome had been created, built and awarded a German patent on June 19, 1925, by Dr. [[Walther Bauersfeld]], Fuller was awarded United States patents. Fuller's patent application made no mention of Bauersfeld's self-supporting dome built some 26 years prior. Although Fuller undoubtedly popularized this type of structure he is mistakenly given credit for its design.

One of his early models was first constructed in 1945 at [[Bennington College]] in Vermont, where he lectured often. Although Bauersfeld's dome could support a full skin of concrete it was not until 1949 that Fuller erected a geodesic dome building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. It was {{convert|4.3|m|ft|abbr=off|sp=us}} in diameter and constructed of aluminium aircraft tubing and a vinyl-plastic skin, in the form of an [[icosahedron]]. To prove his design, Fuller suspended from the structure's framework several students who had helped him build it. The U.S. government recognized the importance of this work, and employed his firm Geodesics, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina to make small domes for the [[United States Marine Corps|Marines]]. Within a few years, there were thousands of such domes around the world.

{{for|the [[structural]] principle, based on [[compression (physical)|compression]] and [[tension (mechanics)|tension]], named by Fuller in the 1960s|Tensegrity}}
Fuller's first "continuous tension – discontinuous compression" geodesic dome (full sphere in this case) was constructed at the [[University of Oregon]] Architecture School in 1959 with the help of students.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Dymaxion world of Buckminster Fuller |first1=Robert W. |last1=Marks |first2=R. Buckminster |last2=Fuller |location=Garden City, N.Y. |publisher=Anchor Books |year=1973 |isbn=978-0-385-01804-3 | page=169 }}</ref> These continuous tension – discontinuous compression structures featured single force compression members (no flexure or bending moments) that did not touch each other and were 'suspended' by the tensional members.