MAPPING


This is a key concept for The Fuller Map, which attempts to map the ideas and designs of Buckminster Fuller, who himself developed maps: actual geographical maps and intellectual maps of fields of study relevant to design. In conjunction with a mapping of his totalistic conception of design thinking (Design Science), the notion of mapping itself underpins the application of Peirce's notion of abduction, here construed as a mechanism of conceptual development and problem-solving.

See Mathematical Mapping.

Fuller made an original contribution to cartography by developing a new projection, with which he produced a minimally distortive map of the world, the Dymaxion Map. This map was used by him to present ideas and information about global energy supplies and traffic patterns, amongst other matters.

Beyond this, Fuller can be seen as someone who was concerned to take account of and keep track of a multiplicity of factors, physical and social and conceptual, which impinge on design. In this sense, he was mapping such factors onto an intellectual matrix which purported to be a totalistic conception of design (Total Thinking).

See Cognitive Mapping.



American Scientist September-October 1999, Volume 87, No. 5 - Conformal Mappings



[BACK]

THE FULLER MAP



© Paul Taylor 2001