Energetic geometries: The Dymaxion Map and the skin/structure fusion of Buckminster Fuller's geodesics

Buckminster Fuller's work has traditionally been divided into the early ‘Dymaxion’ projects, and the later ‘geodesics’. This paper focuses on the 1942 Dymaxion Map as a connection between these careers. The Map was an innovation, substituting local projections for a ‘global’ one. Visualizing the earth's surface as a series of facets, connected by ‘great circles’, he approached the ideal of an interdependent, spherical system of tension and compression. The military development of geodesics suggests interplay between the geometry of the geodesic skin and its potential as a metaphor for global action.