Went with my mathematician friend J to see the fascinating exhibition on Buckminster Fuller "Starting with the Universe" at the Whitney. Fascinating stuff, starting with his 3-wheeled car which, already in the 1920s, seated 11 and got 22 miles/gallon, and was more maneuverable than any 4-wheel car... continuing to his ideas in the 1930s for houses built from the top down, everything suspended from a central pole, working with gravity rather than against it... his remarkable map of the world, minimizing distortion and avoiding cutting up any continents... 
and on and on, through the famous geodesic domes to weird ideas for floating cities - floating on water and Cloud Nine (above), Project for Floating Clouds which are really cities, apparently buoyed just by the heat of the sun warming the air inside. Perhaps because this exhibition was put together in 2008, we were struck by how early Fuller was concerned with sustainable design, minimizing ecological footprint, as well as global interconnections...Our discussions were interrupted, alas, by a call informing me that our building has been sold (boo hoo!). We have a few months to move (assuming the new owners will want us to move at all) and all sorts of questions arise: Brooklyn again or back to Manhattan? housemate or solo? But coming out of this exhibition my reaction was just to try to find a space where I could build myself one of those neat geodesic houses "Bucky" designed after WW2 for returning servicement and using materials no longer needed for airplanes, no piece weighing 10lbs and the whole building erectable by a single person. Those castles in the air don't really appeal... Anyone know of anything closer to the ground coming available in the next few months?
