Art: Bucky, Inc.

When Richard Buckminster Fuller’s name is mentioned, most architects chuckle indulgently; a few reverently bow their heads. Sparkling “Bucky” Fuller, a rotund little man who looks more businesslike than he is, long ago startled the U.S. with designs for three-wheeled, tear-shaped cars and pear-shaped “Dymaxion” houses hung from metal masts, but he never succeeded in convincing investors that his ideas were adaptable to mass production — the only kind that interests him. At 54, Bucky confesses without a smile that his one purpose is still to house “the 800 million people now alive who will at one time or another die of exposure.”

To do it, Bucky three years ago incorporated himself as the nonprofit (and taxexempt) Fuller Research Foundation. Businessmen may sneer at Bucky, but artists are more sympathetic. Last week 91 Chicago artists (most of them young abstractionists) contributed their paintings, sculptures and photographs to a Chicago art auction that raised $700 for Bucky, Inc.

The foundation’s purpose, Fuller says, is to explore “the borderline areas of technology . . . that industry cannot undertake. Bucky believes his researches into the structure of such things as crystals, stars and atoms will result in brand-new principles of building construction. Present-day houses weigh about 22 Ibs. per cubic ft.; Bucky has plans for a new house he calls “Geodesic” which he hopes will weigh only 1 Ib. per 50 cubic ft. If this one turns out to be practical, no one will ever again chuckle at Bucky’s dreams.