Also know as the "Dymaxion Map," the Fuller Projection Map is the only flat map of the entire

surface of the Earth which reveals our planet as one island in one ocean, without any visually
obvious distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any
continents. It was developed by R. Buckminster Fuller who "By 1954, after working on the map
for several decades," finally realized a "satisfactory deck plan of the six and one half sextillion
tons Spaceship Earth."

Traditional world maps reinforce the elements that separate humanity and fail to highlight the
patterns and relationships emerging from the ever evolving and accelerating process of
globalization. Instead of serving as "a precise means for seeing the world from the dynamic,
cosmic and comprehensive viewpoint," the maps we use still cause humanity to "appear
inherently disassociated, remote, self-interestedly preoccupied with the political concept of its
got to be you or me; there is not enough for both."

All flat world map representations of the spherical globe contain some amount of distortion
either in shape, area, distance or direction measurements. On the well-known Mercator world
map, Greenland appears to be three times its relative globe size and Antarctica appears as a
long thin white strip along the bottom edge of the map. Even the popular Robinson Projection,
now used in many schools, still contains a large amount of area distortion with Greenland
appearing 60 percent larger than its relative globe size.

Fuller's view was that given a way to visualize the whole planet with greater accuracy, we
humans will be better equipped to address challenges as we face our common future aboard
Spaceship Earth.

The word Dymaxion, Spaceship Earth and the Fuller Projection Map are trademarks of the
Buckminster Fuller Institute. All rights reserved.

Please send inquiries regarding use and licensing the Fuller Projection to licensing@bfi.org.
Various versions of the Dymaxion Map are available for purchase within our online store.
The Buckymap Puzzle, produced by Susanne Schuricht in collaboration with Holger Struppek.

The world is flattened into a Dymaxion map as it unfolds into an icosahedron net with nearly contiguous
land masses
Map of the world in a Fuller projection with Tissot's Indicatrix of deformation

This icosahedral net shows connectedoceans surrounding Antarctica

An icosahedron: This is the shape onto which the world map is projected before unfolding

Unfolded Dymaxion map with nearly contiguous land masses

 Example of use illustrating early human migrations according to mitochondrialpopulation
genetics (numbers are millenniabefore present)

The Dymaxion map or Fuller map is a projection of a world map onto the surface of
an icosahedron, which can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. The flat map is
heavily interrupted in order to preserve shapes and sizes.

The map was created by Buckminster Fuller. The March 1, 1943, edition
of Life magazine included a photographic essay titled "Life Presents R. Buckminster Fuller's
Dymaxion World". The article included several examples of its use together with a pull-out
section that could be assembled as a "three-dimensional approximation of a globe or laid out
as a flat map, with which the world may be fitted together and rearranged to illuminate special
aspects of its geography."[1] Fuller applied for a patent in the United States in February 1944,
the patent application showing a projection onto a cuboctahedron. The patent was issued in
January 1946.[2]

The 1954 version published by Fuller, the Airocean World Map, used a modified but mostly
regularicosahedron as the base for the projection, which is the version most commonly referred
to today. This version depicts the Earth's continents as "one island," or nearly contiguous land
masses.

The Dymaxion projection is intended only for representations of the entire globe. It is not
a gnomonic projection, whereby global data expands from the center point of a tangent facet
outward to the edges. Instead, each triangle edge of the Dymaxion map matches the scale of a
partial great circle on a corresponding globe, and other points within each facet shrink toward
its middle, rather than enlarging to the peripheries.[3]

The name Dymaxion was applied by Fuller to several of his inventions.

Contents
[hide]

•   1Properties
•   2Impact
•   3See also
•   4References
•   5External links

Properties[edit]
Fuller claimed that his map had several advantages over other projections for world maps.

It has less distortion of relative size of areas, most notably when compared to the Mercator
projection; and less distortion of shapes of areas, notably when compared to the Gall–Peters
projection. Other compromise projections attempt a similar trade-off.

More unusually, the Dymaxion map does not have any "right way up". Fuller argued that in the
universe there is no "up" and "down", or "north" and "south": only "in" and "out".[4] Gravitational
forces of the stars and planets created "in", meaning 'towards the gravitational center', and
"out", meaning "away from the gravitational center". He attributed the north-up-superior/south-
down-inferior presentation of most other world maps to cultural bias.

Fuller intended the map to be unfolded in different ways to emphasize different aspects of the
world.[5]Peeling the triangular faces of the icosahedron apart in one way results in an
icosahedral net that shows an almost contiguous land mass comprising all of Earth's
continents – not groups of continents divided by oceans. Peeling the solid apart in a different
way presents a view of the world dominated by connected oceans surrounded by land.

Showing the continents as "one island earth" also helped Fuller explain, in his book Critical
Path, the journeys of early seafaring people, who were in effect using prevailing winds to
circumnavigate this world island.

Impact[edit]
A 1967 Jasper Johns painting, "Map (Based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Airocean
World)", depicting a Dymaxion map, hangs in the permanent collection of the Museum
Ludwig in Cologne.[citation needed]

The World Game, a collaborative simulation game in which players attempt to solve world
problems,[6][7] is played on a 70-by-35-foot Dymaxion map.[8]

In 2013, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the publication of the Dymaxion map
in Life magazine, the Buckminster Fuller Institute announced the "Dymax Redux", a
competition for graphic designers and visual artists to re-imagine the Dymaxion map.[9][10] The
competition received over 300 entries from 42 countries.[9]
Buckminster Fuller applied his patented Dymaxion brand to all sorts of objects
over the course of his career, from cars to buildings to entire cities. But one of the
most useful and enduring applications? The Dymaxion World map, which unfolds
the earth into a long string of shapes, like a carefully peeled orange.

2013 marks the map’s 70th birthday, and to celebrate, the Brooklyn-
basedBuckminster Fuller Institute launched Dymax Redux, competition to
redesign updated versions of the map. The winners will be unveiled sometime this
fall, but in the meantime, it's worth taking a look back at some of the awesomely
tessellated Dymaxion spinoffs that already exist.

First, a bit of background. What makes the Dymaxion World map so enduring? It’s
a brilliant mathematical object. Fuller’s projection bears far less distortion than
other flat maps, like the Mercator projection or the Peters projection, and it divides
up the globe into a contiguous surface without dividing any of its land masses.
Because it isn’t a traditional “shadow” projection it’s not distorted on one axis or
another, so you can read it from any orientation and rearrange its contents in any
number of ways.

But it’s the Dymaxion’s distinctly optimistic point of view that makes it so unique.
Patented at the end of World War II, it shows us all seven continents as a single
archipelago, or "one island in one ocean.” It took him decades of tinkering to figure
out the right projection, but it was important to him that we see the earth as a
single, interconnected network. “For the layman, engrossed in belated, war-taught
lessons in geography, the Dymaxion World map is a means by which he can see the
whole world fairly and all at once,” explained LIFE magazine when it published the
map in 1943. The writers at LIFE also found a way to rearrange the map to
articulate a bit of wartime racism against Japan: "The ruthless logic of Jap
imperialism is exposed by this layout,” the editors continued. “Their thinking
strikes an obvious contrast to the landlubber geopolitics of their German allies.”
Well then!

Fuller probably disapproved of the way LIFE twisted his map into something
aggressive, but that’s a perfect example of how maps can become socio-political
weapons—and why he thought we needed to retool them. Fuller intended the
Dymaxion World map to serve as a tool for communication and collaboration
between nations. “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother
trying to teach them,” he famously said. “Instead, give them a tool, the use of which
will lead to new ways of thinking.”

Did the map lead to a new world order? Not exactly—but did lead to a revolution in
mapping. More about Dymax Redux is here, but in the meantime, check out eight
other interesting applications of Fuller's projection below.
A printable version of Fuller's "Airocean" World map that includes assembly instructions.

The Cryosphere, or a map of the world map arranged based on ice, snow, glaciers, permafrost

and ice sheets, by Nordphil.

A map showing the distribution of 259 "critical infrastructures" in energy, agriculture, banking

and finance, drinking water and other systems, via Domus.

Flight routes of the Dubai-based airline, Emirates, mapped using Fuller's projection.

Via Axismaps.
Rehabstudio's Googlespiel, an interactive Dymaxion map built at Google Developer Day 2011.
 A page from Nicholas Felton's Feltron Annual Report, showing the designer's travels over the

course of 2008.

Lead image: Buckminster Fuller and Chuck Byrne, Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map, 1981,

courtesy of the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

The Fuller Projection, or Dymaxion Map, solves the age-old

problem of displaying spherical data on a flat surface using a
low-distortion transformation. The map also shows the
world's land masses without interruption -- the map's sinuses
do not cut into the land area at any point.
The Fuller Projection is rendered by juxtaposing a grid of triangles on the globe and transferring the data to
corresponding triangles on an unfolded icosahedron.

Although the algorithm for transferring data from a sphere to

a plane differs from previous icosahedral projections (the
Gnomonic and John P. Synder's for example), Robert W.
Gray has shown that the orientation of the icosahedron is the
most visually distinctive aspect of the map.

To the naked eye, the Fuller, gnomonic and Snyder

projections are quasi-identical, once all are made to conform
to the same trademarked layout.

See Chris Rywalt's site for download options

Fuller hoped that this map would be widely used for sharing global data, but discouraged people from
marring it with national political boundaries. Fuller regarded sovereignties as holdovers from a bygone era,
and dangerous obstructions to the maturation of a post-racist, post-nationalist civilization (see No Race, No
Class, Desovereignization?).

Perhaps owing to his anti-nationalism, Fuller's projection has never been favored by the United Nations,
which instead promotes the Peters Projection as an alternative to the Mercator. The Mercator artificially
amplifies the sizes of landmasses in a way which makes the industrialized, developed nations appear to
account for a greater percentage of the total geographical area than they really do.

Fuller's map actually introduces less overall distortion than the Peters Projection.