Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943)

In 2017, we introduced you information of a world map pur­port­ed­ly extra accu­price than any to this point, designed by Japan­ese archi­tect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, referred to as the Autha­Graph, updates a cen­turies-old technique of flip­ing the globe right into a flat sur­face by first con­vert­ing it to a cylin­der. Win­ner of Japan’s Good Design Grand Award, it serves as each a bril­liant design solu­tion and an replace to our out­mod­ed con­cep­tions of world geog­ra­phy.

However as some learn­ers have level­ed out, the Autha­Graph additionally appears to attract fairly heav­i­ly on an ear­li­er map made by some of the imaginative and prescient­ary of the­o­rists and design­ers, Buck­min­ster Fuller, who in 1943 utilized his Dymax­ion commerce­mark to the map you see above, which will like­ly remind you of his most rec­og­niz­ready inven­tion, the Geo­des­ic Dome, “home of the longer term.”

Whether or not Narukawa has acknowl­edged Fuller as an inspi­ra­tion I can­not say. In any case, 73 years earlier than the Autha­Graph, the Dymax­ion Map achieved a sim­i­lar feat, with sim­i­lar moti­va­tions. As the Buck­min­ster Fuller Insti­tute (BFI) factors out, “The Fuller Professional­jec­tion Map is [or was] the one flat map of the complete sur­face of the Earth which reveals our plan­et as one island within the ocean, with­out any visu­al­ly obvi­ous dis­tor­tion of the rel­a­tive styles and sizes of the land areas, and with­out cut up­ting any con­ti­nents.”

Fuller pub­lished his map in Life magazine­a­zine, as a cor­rec­tive, he stated, “for the lay­man, engrossed in belat­ed, war-taught classes in geog­ra­phy…. The Dymax­ion World map is a way by which he can see the entire world truthful­ly without delay.” Fuller, notes Kelsey Camp­bell-Dol­laghan at Giz­mo­do, “intend­ed the Dymax­ion World map to function a software for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between nations.”

Fuller believed, writes BFI, that “giv­en a strategy to visu­al­ize the entire plan­et with better accu­ra­cy, we people will probably be guess­ter geared up to deal with chal­lenges as we face our com­mon future aboard Area­ship Earth.” Was he naïve or forward of his time?

We could have had a superb snigger at a latest repli­ca of Fuller’s close to­ly undriv­ready, “scary as hell,” 1930 Dymax­ion Automobile, considered one of his first inven­tions. Lots of Fuller’s con­tem­po­raries additionally discovered his work weird and imprac­ti­cal. Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert at The New York­er sums up the recep­tion he usually obtained for his “schemes,” which “had the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry qual­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with sci­ence fic­tion (or males­tal hos­pi­tals).” The com­males­tary appears unfair.

Fuller’s influ­ence on archi­tec­ture, design, and sys­tems the­o­ry has been broad and deep, although a lot of his designs solely res­onat­ed lengthy after their debut. He considered him­self as an “antic­i­pa­to­ry design sci­en­tist,” relatively than an inven­tor, and remarked, “if you wish to train peo­ple a brand new method of assume­ing, don’t each­er strive­ing to show them. As an alternative, give them a software, using which can result in new methods of assume­ing.” On this sense, we should agree that the Dymax­ion map was an unqual­i­fied suc­cess as an inspi­ra­tion for inno­v­a­tive map design.

In addi­tion to its pos­si­bly indi­rect influ­ence on the Autha­Graph, Fuller’s map has many promi­nent imi­ta­tors and sparked “a rev­o­lu­tion in map­ping,” writes Camp­bell-Dol­laghan. She factors us to, amongst oth­ers, the Cryos­phere, fur­ther up, a Fuller map “organized primarily based on ice, snow, glac­i­ers, per­mafrost and ice sheets”; to Dubai-based Emi­charges airline’s map present­ing flight routes; and to the “Google­spiel,” an inter­ac­tive Dymax­ion map constructed by Rehab­stu­dio for Google Devel­op­er Day, 2011.

And, simply above, we see the Dymax­ion Woodocean World map by Nicole San­tuc­ci, win­ner of 2013’s DYMAX REDUX, an “open name to cre­ate a brand new and inspir­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Map.” You’ll discover a hand­ful of oth­er distinctive sub­mis­sions at BFI, includ­ing the run­ner-up, Clouds Dymax­ion Map, under, by Anne-Gaelle Amiot, an “absolute­ly beau­ti­ful hand-drawn depic­tion of an actual­i­ty that’s nearly all the time edit­ed from our maps: cloud pat­terns cir­cling above Earth.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­ers Could Have Cre­at­ed the Most Accu­price Map of Our World: See the Autha­Graph

A Har­row­ing Take a look at Dri­ve of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s 1933 Dymax­ion Automobile: Artwork That Is Scary to Experience

The Life & Instances of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­males­tary

Buck­min­ster Fuller Tells the World “Each­factor He Is aware of” in a 42-Hour Lec­ture Sequence (1975)

Bertrand Rus­promote & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Ought to Work Much less, and Dwell and Be taught Extra

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness