Starting with the universe

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. If we were to take a step back and look at situations and problems from broader perspectives would we design better systems, better products, better ways of living in the world?

The Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Whitney, 'Starting with the Universe', is one of those broader perspectives. Fuller was a visionary designer, philosopher, poet, inventor, engineer, and advocate of sustainability - one of the great transdisciplinary thinkers of the last century with a legacy that extends to nearly every field of the arts and sciences. He chose to devote his life to the question 'Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?'. He sought ways of identifying what he, as an individual, could do to improve humanity's condition, which large organizations, governments, and private enterprises inherently could not do.

Currently there are many similar discussions happening in the world, in many fields, about the same concerns. Have we really progressed in our thinking or are we asking the same questions because of habitual actions and patterns? Fuller was able to approach some large societal and universal questions with a holistic approach to design. This methodology helped him to see all aspects of the problem, thus developing solutions and ideas that took into account what impact and evolution his work would have. He defined design as the attempt to fulfill human needs in an evolving technical and cultural context - a similar approach to many exciting things that are happening in the world today. We are all becoming more familiar and concerned with our own individual impact as well as the collective impact we have on the world.

So if mainstream thinking would have accepted a more holistic approach, would we still be asking the same questions about the same topics almost 40 years later - the environment, human impact, business models and healthy economics? If businesses took on a more evolutionary vision to defining themselves, innovating and solving problems would we be asking more progressive questions of ourselves? Is it time to stop designing band-aids and time to start re-inventing?

The exhibition is a show of more than five decades of Fuller's integrated approach toward the design and technology of housing, transportation, cartography and communication, much of it shown for the first time. A lot of his work never made it into production, often dismissed as hopelessly utopian. Potentially a utopian approach to the future is not such a bad idea.

12 September 2008, posted by Bethany Koby