The Standard Living Package

10 Gonzo Machines From Rogue Inventor Buckminster Fuller:

Bucky's interest in efficient design encompassed more than just external structure. Instead of assembling the comforts of home piece by piece, Fuller proposed a packaged set of everything necessary for comfortable human life, from toilets to tables, in one easy crate. Fuller envisioned such a Standard Living Package as being a family's simple starter pack.

via Great Map

Global Outlook: The Legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller

R. Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House Model, Third Version, 1929, mixed media. Photo: Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Bucky Fuller is profiled in the November 2008 issue of Artforum.

via BFI

Jacques Piccard (1922-2008)

image: Wikimedia Commons

Lieutenant Don Walsh, USN, and Jacques Piccard in the bathyscaphe TRIESTE, nearly seven miles deep in the Marianas Trench, 1960.

Jacques Piccard, Scientist Who Explored the Deep Seas, Dies at 86:

Jacques Piccard helped his father invent the bathyscaphe, a vessel that allows people to descend to great depths. On Jan. 23, 1960, he and Lt. Don Walsh of the United States Navy took the vessel, named the Trieste, into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific to a depth of 35,800 feet, nearly seven miles below sea level. It remains the deepest human dive ever.

Biography: Jacques Piccard:

Jacques Ernest Jean Piccard was born July 28, 1922, in Brussels, Belgium. His career as an ocean engineer and explorer began with the aeronautical exploits of his father, Auguste, a physicist who became interested in balloons as a way of studying cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. In 1931, Auguste reached a record altitude of 50,000 feet in a balloon equipped with the first pressurized cabin, becoming the first person to reach the stratosphere and return safely.

Gustave Eiffel in his work room

Schtok blog:

Original caption:
Gustave Eiffel is shown in his work room, experimenting with aerodynamic balance to find the exact pressure of the tower against the four caissons which support the four huge piers. Interest in the Eiffel Tower, called one of the seven wonders of the modern age, has been revived because of France’s plans to honor the great designer and builder of the forerunner to the skyscraper. The huge tower, 984.25 feet high, and completed in 1889, is still the tallest structure built by man. On April 29, the City of Paris will unveil a monument and bust of Eiffel by the famous sculptors, Auguste Perret and Andre Granet, erected at the base of the Tower. Eiffel is known as a great visionary and was forced to battle against architects and others of the time, who said the wind would destroy his tower, as that of Babel was destroyed. Since its completion in 1889, 13,153,921 pers

Other than this, I haven't been able to find a source for this image.

Les Machines de l'Ile

Le Grand Eléphant (trans. ala Google):

He lives in the streets of central nave. When the animal part in majestic promenade is a real architecture movement that sort of a cathedral of steel. The 49 passengers boarded for a surprise trip to the island of Nantes. Each output of the pachyderm is a unique spectacle offered to everyone.

Travelers are discovering, Interior, gear and feet moving. They can trigger barrissement and control certain movements of the animal and thus become actors in the Machine. Since the back of the elephant, they are like the 4th floor of a house that moves, with a view "impregnable" on the banks of the Loire. In this crew, out of time, they s'inventent another trip and docked in the city of Jules Verne.

Les Machines de l'Ile
The Sultan's Elephant
See it in action (thanks, John)

via rebel:art

Doodles, Drafts and Designs

Doodles, Drafts and Designs:

Engineers, inventors, and designers produce drawings as part of their creative process. They draw to work out and refine concepts and details. They draw to persuade. They draw to give direction. And they draw to record their ideas and to learn from others.

This exhibition presents examples of industrial drawings in the collections of the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Some are working drawings, ideas sketched in pencil or ink. Others are more finished, designed for presentation. A few are printed, either as sales material or as part of a patent application. They visually document American industrial creativity, from inventor's hand and investor's boardroom, to patent office, factory floor, and manufacturer's showroom.

Loads of fascinating images, from rough scribbles to fine draftsmanship, many both.

via Glasgow School of Art Library

Tatjana van Vark

Navigation and Bombing System NBS (H2S Mk 9A and Navigation, Bombing and Computer NBC) used in V-bombers Victor, Vulcan and Valiant.

From her website:

Only a selection out of some fields of my activities is shown.
Concerning explanations:
Verbalisations involve personal semantic reactions, yours and mine.
Verbalisations tend to exclude reality.
Just look, maintaining internal silence, until the meaning of my work becomes clear.
Then share my lifelong joy in the mystery Reality with its surprises, limitations and instabilities.

Is it art? Is it invention? Take her advice, shut off your thoughts and give it a look.

via Dinosaurs and Robots

Storm Sewer System / Saitama, Japan

Impressive Storm Sewer System / Saitama, Japan
via NOTCOT.org

What We Can Learn From Buckminster Fuller

As you might have noticed, I'm a total geek for Buckminster Fuller. I'm reading Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth again this weekend and I really enjoyed this Wired photo essay.

The above image is one of his wackier ideas:

To construct one of his Lightful Towers, Fuller imagined that one airship would first drop a bomb and create a hole in the ground, then a second airship would drop the building into the hole. The stacked apartment unit would be sealed into the ground with cement and ready for use.

There is a more human, even somewhat darker side to the Fuller mythos that was brought back to mind by the comment on the above post and was hinted at in a recent New York Times article. We'll be exploring this side of dear old Bucky in the offing.

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge: The Movie

BFI:

Bucky had it right. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

That’s why we’re awarding a $100,000 prize each year for comprehensive solutions that radically advance human well-being and ecosystem health. The 2008 prize will be conferred June 23rd in NYC.

A lot of times, promotional videos like this are awful. This one is really good.

Exhibition of sculpture and prints by Buckminster Fuller opening at Sebastion + Barquet Gallery

The Buckminster Fuller Institute:

The word Dymaxion combines three of Fuller's favorite terms: dynamic, maximum and tension. He applied it widely to a number of his inventions including the Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map. His map received a patent for displaying the world's geographical data on one surface without distorting the relative shapes and sizes and without any breaks in any of the continental contours. This map is presented as a unique six feet by twelve feet silkscreen print on canvas and as a 50 inch x 72 inch edition on paper. During his lifetime, Fuller lectured tirelessly. Excerpts from 42 hours of his audiotapes, titled Everything I Know, will provide ambient sound for the exhibition.

This exhibition at Sebastian + Barquet is concurrent with the major retrospective, Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe, on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from June 26 - September 21, 2008.

Transatlantic Tunnel complete? Telectroscope next?

do you believe in the telectroscope? reports:

I received a mysterious phone call at 7:00 a.m this morning from Paul St George.

He sounded tired, but elated. He urged me to come down to Tower Bridge to bear witness to the completion of the tunnel...

Tomorrow he will prepare the ground for the Telectroscope and he has agreed to answer any questions that people may wish to pose him about his project.

Anyone in the area, be there at one p.m. and have at it.

I'm not sold on this, just yet.

Previous UT entry

100 year-old Transatlantic tunnel nears completion

tiscali.co.uk:

Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more that a century after it was begun, the tunnel will finally be completed. Immediately afterwards, an extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope will be installed at both ends which will miraculously allow people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.

If this is for real, this is astonishing news. The Telectroscope sounds cool enough, but I want to go into the tunnel!

Apparently, Paul St. George, using maps and drawings passed down through his family, is completing the tunnel from London to New York that his great-grandfather, Alexander Stanhope St. George started, but never finished, over a century ago. Once the tunnel is completed they say they will install the Telectroscopes. Mr. St George refuses to disclose the exact locations in London and New York where they will be situated, but rumor has it that they are near the Tower Bridge in London and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

You can read their press release here.

There's a weblog covering the story, with quite a bit of detail.

Here's a brief interview with Paul St. George:



and another:



the Telectroscope?



video source

I don't know. I want to believe. We'll have to keep an eye on this story.

via MetaFilter