Please note that portions of Mr. Kara’s lecture have been removed from this video at his request.
In celebration of R. Buckminster Fuller’s 120th anniversary (1895-2015), “Pattern Thinking” explores the relationship between artifacts and inventions in his work, and their legacy in contemporary practice. Fuller’s explorations into the physical “pattern” of Shelter, Structure, Cartography and even the Universe will be juxtaposed to his conceptual “thinking” of terms such as Dymaxion, Geodesic and Tensegrity as a way to argue for their irreducibility. Through the lens of Fuller’s transversal “pattern thinking”, a number of artifacts and inventions will be explored from their literal to their most conceptual manifestation: “Dymaxion” as a mathematical, projective, cartographic, and political model of efficiency; “Geodesic” as a formal, structural, environmental, and social model of shelter; “Tensegrity” as a structural, natural and universal model of order…
Daniel López-Pérez will present historical and contemporary documentation that traces Fuller’s trajectory of exploration spanning four decades, while Hanif Kara will speak about their analysis (local and global, stick and surface, linear non-linear) and reflect upon Fuller’s legacy in contemporary projects and current design trends.
The talk will be moderated by Iñaki Ábalos, Chair of the Department of Architecture, with responses by Andrew Witt, Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture and Ingrid Bengtson (March ’15).
