Design: The Dymaxion American

DESIGN

(See Cover) He has been called "the first poet of technology," "the greatest living genius of industrial-technical realization in building," "an anticipator of the world to come—which is different from being a prophet," "a seminal thinker," and "an inspired child." But all these encomiums are fairly recent. For most of his life, R. Buckminster Fuller was known simply as a crackpot.

He is also something more than the mere sum of his praise and criticism. He is a throwback to the classic American individualist, a mold which produced Thomas Edison and Thoreau—men with the fresh eye that cannot...