Buckminster Fuller applied his patent Dymaxion stigma to all sort of objects over the course of his life history , from cars to buildings toentire cities . But one of the most useful and enduring app program ? The Dymaxion World map , which spread out the earth into a long bowed stringed instrument of shapes , like a carefully peeled orangeness .
2013 marks the map ’s 70th natal day , and to keep , the Brooklyn - basedBuckminster Fuller InstitutelaunchedDymax Redux , rival to redesign updated versions of the mathematical function . The winners will be unveiled sometime this fall , but in the interim , it ’s worth have a looking at back at some of the awesomely tessellated Dymaxion spinoffs that already subsist .
First , a bit of background . What stool the Dymaxion World map so enduring ? It ’s a brilliant mathematical physical object . Fuller ’s forcing out carry far less aberration than other flat map , like the Mercator projection or the Peters jut , and it split up the globe into a contiguous surface without dividing any of its acres masses . Because it is n’t a traditional “ shadow ” projection it ’s not distorted on one axis or another , so you’re able to read it from any predilection and rearrange its message in any telephone number of slipway .
But it ’s the Dymaxion ’s distinctly optimistic head of view that makes it so unique . Patented at the final stage of World War II , it shows us all seven continent as a single archipelago , or “ one island in one ocean . ” It call for him decades of tinkering to image out the right projection , but it was of import to him that we see the world as a single , interconnected mesh . “ For the layman , engrossed in belated , war - learn lesson in geography , the Dymaxion World single-valued function is a means by which he can see the whole reality fairly and all at once,”explainedLIFE magazine when it release the function in 1943 . The writers at LIFE also find a agency to rearrange the map to enunciate a moment of wartime racism against Japan : “ The unpitying logic of Jap imperialism is scupper by this layout , ” the editors continued . “ Their thinking strikes an obvious direct contrast to the landlubber geopolitics of their German allies . ” Well then !
Fuller probably disapproved of the way LIFE twisted his mathematical function into something aggressive , but that ’s a unadulterated example of how single-valued function can become socio - political weapons — and why he thought we needed to retool them . Fuller mean the Dymaxion World function to serve as a tool for communicating and coaction between nations . “ If you want to instruct mass a unexampled way of thinking , do n’t devil trying to teach them , ” he famously said . “ Instead , give them a tool , the use of which will lead to fresh room of thinking . ”
A printable version of Fuller ’s “ Airocean ” World function that admit gathering instructions .
The Cryosphere , or a map of the world single-valued function arranged free-base on crank , snow , glaciers , permafrost and ice sheets , byNordphil .
A map showing the statistical distribution of 259 “ critical infrastructures ” in vigor , husbandry , banking and finance , drinking water and other systems , viaDomus .
flight of stairs routes of the Dubai - base airline , Emirates , map using Fuller ’s projection . ViaAxismaps .
Rehabstudio’sGooglespiel , an synergistic Dymaxion map built at Google Developer Day 2011 .
A Thomas Nelson Page from Nicholas Felton’sFeltron Annual Report , showing the designer ’s travels over the course of study of 2008 .
chair image : Buckminster Fuller and Chuck Byrne , Dymaxion Air - Ocean World Map , 1981 , courtesy of theBuckminster Fuller Institute .
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