Radical Curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller

Radical Curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller offers a journey through the universe of an unclassifiable investigator and visionary who, throughout the 20th century, foresaw many of the major systemic crises that were to come. Creator of a fascinating body of work, crossing fields such as architecture, engineering, metaphysics, mathematics and education, Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) devised a way to combine design and science with the revolutionary potential to change the world.

Bucky, as his friends and collaborators knew him, possessed an all-embracing knowledge as extensive and exciting as his experiments. Full of leaps of imagination and wisdom, Bucky’s life journey questioned how we might better understand and guide this extraordinary spaceship he called Earth. Bucky shows us new ways of exploration and renewal through a range of different projects. At the most basic and material level, he sought to transform models of housing and transport, whilst on a much grander scale, he pursued collective and networked research into our planet’s resources and their management.

His great mission was to find a way to ensure that the world worked at 100% of its capability for 100% of the population, without any distinctions or prejudices. Radical Curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster peers into Bucky’s world from the global state of emergency of 2022, a time of great upheaval and uncertainty. Inequality, massive urbanisation, extreme geopolitical tension, ecological crisis are all areas in which Bucky worked tirelessly to find solutions. Returning to his concerns and strategies, contemporary researchers follow in his footsteps and apply his ideas across architecture, art and design.

ArtScience Museum has created a range of educational activities to encourage visitors of all ages to learn, play and interact with Bucky’s keys ideas including a Build-it-like-Bucky Playground! Dome.

Accompanying Radical Curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller is a series of online lectures that gives insight into the making of the exhibition and the comprehensive relevance of Buckminster Fuller’s ideas. Speakers include José Luis de Vicente and Rosa Pera (guest curators of Radical Curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller), Charu Kokate (Principal and Director of Safdie Architects’ Singapore office), and more.  

An ArtScience Museum co-production with Fundación Telefónica, Madrid and guest curators Rosa Pera and José Luis de Vicente.