buckymap-puzzle, a screen-based application - An online puzzle of the Buckminster Fuller Projection "Our Spaceship Earth" satellite map. Turning maps up side down, dressing the image of the earth in another fashion can renew our vision of the world. Buckminster Fuller did this with his Dymaxion World Map (1936-1956), that is build up out of triangles that can be put together in all kind of variations. The continent as a continuous unity. In Fullers words: "the outdated divisions of the world in East and West, North and South". Here you can play the best known variation.

In 2001, the digital buckymap puzzle was produced by Susanne Schuricht in collaboration with Holger Struppek and Lauren Darges from the Buckminster Fuller Institute. It's dedicated to Buckminster Fuller and created as a kind of present for the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

By Paul Taylor

"A map of the world which doesn't include Utopia isn't even worth glancing at."

- Oscar Wilde

"The only complete reading is that which transforms the book into a simultaneous network of reciprocal relations."
- J. Rousset

This [online] document is a study of the comprehensive designer Buckminster Fuller, an outstanding character of the 20th century, and a kind of practical visionary.

Fuller's remarkable career as an inventor, architect, designer, cartographer, writer and theorist amounts to a design syllabus in itself, even if his own conclusions and solutions are not accepted and applied. Many people would argue that life might be vastly improved if his designs were better known and implemented.
This presentation of his ideas is not intended as a slavish devotional exercise, nor a piece of cynical criticism. Part of the plan here is to investigate the logic of synergetics. At this stage the account is verbal, not visual, but what is important in geometry is the logic rather than the pictures.

by Robert Gray

In almost every book about R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller, and several books by Bucky Fuller, you can find descriptions and illustrations of Fuller's world maps. His most well known world map is based on the icosahedron.

by Robert Gray

The general overview of the algorithm I use is:

First...

1. Understand layout of Icosahedron on sphere.
2. Understand layout of map in plane.
3. Define a "standard" spherical triangle into which all sphere points will get mapped to.
4. Define a standard plane equilateral triangle into which all the standard spherical triangle points will get mapped to.

by Robert Gray

Below is a table I composed in an attempt to compare the area distortions between Fuller's world map and the Snyder, Robinson and Van Der Grinten world maps.

A quick word or two about area distortion is in order here. First, there are different ways in which to calculate the area distortion of a world map. The method I used to calculate the area distortion of Fuller's map for this table is not exactly the same as was used for the other two world maps. For Fuller's map I simply divided each named land mass into smaller spherical (and planner) polygons (no more than 20 polygons per area.) This only gives me a ruff indication of the area distortion.

by Robert Gray

Below is a table I composed for the positioning of the icosahedron as used to create Fuller's icosahedron based world map. These coordinates are very slightly modified to those I first saw in an IBM Technical Report by Mr. Scott. The modifications mentioned here were to make the distances between connected vertices all the same. The coordinates I saw in the IBM TR were off ever so slightly and may have been due to rounding of the numbers. You will also have to adjust the coordinates listed below if you wish to use them and you need them to be more accurate than I list here.

by Robert Gray

Fuller often wrote about the visual appearance of his world map. If I am not mistaken, he wrote that he asked several people to look at his map and to tell him which of the land masses displayed were too big or too small based on the appearance of the land masses on a globe. He reports that they were unable to accurately do this.

Therefore, Fuller concluded that his map was visually very accurate. (If anyone can find this in one of his books, please send me the reference so I can include it here.)

After doing the exact transformation equations and the area distortion analysis for Fuller's icosahedron based world map, I decided to do a visual comparison of Fuller's world map. The purpose of this comparison was, in part, to determine if the great success of Fuller's map in displaying all the world's land masses as whole islands in one world ocean without obvious visual distortion in the shape and relative sizes of the land masses is a result of Fuller's projection method or "simply" the result of the orientation of the icosahedron.