Born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts, Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller was to become one of the most creative thinkers of the twentieth century. Fuller was schooled at the Milton Academy and in 1913 entered Harvard University. After being expelled two years later for irresponsible conduct, Fuller found work as a machinist at a Sherbrooke, Quebec, textile mill. During World War I he served briefly in the U.S. Navy.

In 1917, Fuller married Anne Hewlett, the daughter of well-known architect and artist James Monroe Hewlett. Fuller and Hewlett formed a construction company, and after supervising the construction of several hundred houses, Fuller concluded that custom homes were inefficiently built.

In 1922 one of the Fullers' two daughters, Alexandra, died after a series of illnesses. Fuller blamed her death partly on a poor physical environment, and he vowed to improve that environment through comprehensive, anticipatory design. This philosophy became an important guiding...