By Paul Taylor

"A map of the world which doesn't include Utopia isn't even worth glancing at."

- Oscar Wilde

"The only complete reading is that which transforms the book into a simultaneous network of reciprocal relations."
- J. Rousset

This [online] document is a study of the comprehensive designer Buckminster Fuller, an outstanding character of the 20th century, and a kind of practical visionary.

Fuller's remarkable career as an inventor, architect, designer, cartographer, writer and theorist amounts to a design syllabus in itself, even if his own conclusions and solutions are not accepted and applied. Many people would argue that life might be vastly improved if his designs were better known and implemented.
This presentation of his ideas is not intended as a slavish devotional exercise, nor a piece of cynical criticism. Part of the plan here is to investigate the logic of synergetics. At this stage the account is verbal, not visual, but what is important in geometry is the logic rather than the pictures.

As originally conceived, THE FULLER MAP was intended to help designers and design students in the following ways:

• It presents a detailed case-study of a comprehensive designer, Buckminster Fuller.
• It shows how certain theoretical matters may be related to practical design, for instance geometrical ideas are applied to architecture and cartography.
• It provides check-lists of factors relevant to design.
• It discusses problem-solving.
• It may enable the abductive formation of new conceptions of design issues.

The text is a work-in-progress, begun in August 1991, and originally written to meet the structural requirements of John Wood's IDEAbase system. It was compiled and edited as an experimental, dynamic, interactive, screen-based document. It was not, therefore, intended as a completed linear text to be printed onto paper or other static medium.

THE FULLER MAP: INDEX

It is admitted that this is not an index in the full sense of the word, but the job of creating one would be too onerous. Many of Buckminster Fuller's books are without indexes, and part of the original motive for The Fuller Map was to cope with this lack, and to interconnect ideas and designs which were scattered throughout a series of books. So, although each entry here is linked to only one module, the texts are hyperlinked, allowing a labyrinthine journey through the complex realm of Fuller's work. This hypertext is steadily growing.

» Click here to check out the hypertext site