From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Tennant Baldwin (born 1933) (whose books
and articles have been published under the names J.
Baldwin, Jay Baldwin, and James T. Baldwin) is an
American
industrial designer and writer. Baldwin was a
student of
Buckminster Fuller; Baldwin's work has been inspired
by Fuller's principles and (in the case of some of
Baldwin's published writing) has popularized and
interpreted Fuller's ideas and achievements. In his own
right, Baldwin has been a figure in American designers'
efforts to incorporate solar, wind, and other renewable
sources of energy. In his career, being a
fabricator has been as important as being a
designer. Baldwin is noted as the inventor of the
geodesic "Pillow Dome."
[edit]
Life and work
J. Baldwin was born the son of an engineer. Baldwin
has said that, at 18, he heard
Buckminster Fuller speak for 14 hours non-stop. This
was in 1951 at the
University of Michigan, where Baldwin had enrolled
to learn automobile design because a friend of his had
been killed in a car accident that Baldwin attributed to
bad design. He worked with Fuller prior to graduation
from U. of M. in 1955. During his student years, Baldwin
worked (in a unique job-sharing role) in an auto factory
assembly line. He went on to do graduate work at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Baldwin remained a friend of Buckminster Fuller, and
reflected that "By example, he encouraged me to think
for myself comprehensively, to be disciplined, to work
for the good of everyone, and to have a good time doing
it." [BuckyWorks, p. xi]
As a young designer in the late 1950s and early
1960s, Baldwin designed advanced camping equipment with
Bill Moss Associates. Thereafter, he taught
simultaneously at San Francisco State College (now
called
San Francisco State University),
San Francisco Art Institute, and the Oakland campus
of
California College of Arts & Crafts for about six
years.
The period 1968-69 found him both a visiting lecturer
at
Southern Illinois University and the design editor
of the innovative
Whole Earth Catalog. (The Catalog came
out in many editions between 1968 and 1998, and Baldwin
continued to edit and write for both the Catalog
and an offshoot publication,
CoEvolution Quarterly, later renamed
Whole Earth Review.) In the early 1970s, Baldwin
taught at Pacific High School.
Baldwin was at the center of experimentation with
geodesic domes (an unconventional building-design
approach, explored by Fuller, that maximizes strength
and covered area in relation to materials used). He also
dove enthusiastically into the application of
renewable energy sources in homes and in
food-production facilities, working with Integrated Life
Support Systems Laboratories (ILS, in
New Mexico) and with Dr
John Todd and the other New Alchemists involved with
the "Ark" project. Baldwin's initial involvement with
solar energy was during that very experimental, ad-lib
phase when much was moving from principles or theory
into actual development. In the 1970s, at ILS, he was
the co-developer of what has been touted as the world's
first building to be heated and otherwise powered by
solar and wind power exclusively.
Baldwin referred to his own rural home as "a
three-dimensional sketchpad."
During the
Jerry Brown administration, Baldwin worked in the
California Office of Appropriate Technology. Since the
1970s, Baldwin has continued to work as a designer in
association with numerous organizations and projects. He
organized for himself a mobile design studio and machine
workshop (in a van pulling an Airstream trailer) to
drive to various projects across America.
With the ears of a wider audience in the 1980s,
Baldwin developed an incisive critique of the American
automobile industry, which he viewed as over-focused on
superficial
marketing concerns and farcically under-concerned
with real innovation and improvement. He was also a
constructive critic of the emerging industries
manufacturing "soft technology" equipment like wind
turbines.
In the 1990s, Baldwin wrote a book about Buckminster
Fuller, his ideas, experiments, and influence, Bucky
Works: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today.
In the late 1990s, he worked with the
Rocky Mountain Institute (Snowmass, Colorado) in the
research, design, and development of the ultralight,
ultra-efficient "Hypercar" — a prototype by way of which
independent designers hope to show the way for the
world's auto manufacturers. With conceptual development
having begun in 1991, the current version of the
Hypercar uses a small generator to power an electric
motor in each wheel.
Given his long-term role as a "technology"
editor, something should be mentioned about the scope of
Baldwin's focus on technology. His interests remained
broader than that represented in the shifting media and
popular focus of the mid 1980s and later, which inclined
to highlight the
micro chip and electronic devices based on it.
Baldwin has continued to point out the value of (and
need for evaluation of) technologies within a
larger perimeter. Certainly shelter and transportation
technologies have always interested him. So have tools,
and whether a device or tool or process was freshly
innovative or age-old in concept, if it enabled a person
to “do the job” with wood, metal, fiberglass panels,
soil, trees, or whatever, it remained worthy of
Baldwin’s attention. Whereas the personal computer often
(though not necessarily) inclines its operator toward
imagination, almost in the sense of entertainment,
Baldwin has remained equally interested in doing,
in application. And while he has never ceased to be
interested in the products of the factory, Baldwin has
always wanted to empower individuals and small teams of
people to accomplish something.
Baldwin, as one of the notable designer technologists
whose cross-disciplinary approaches have opened new
territory, was featured in the 1994 documentary film
Ecological Design: Inventing the Future. The film
viewed these designers as "outlaws" whose careers have
necessarily developed "outside the box" of their time,
largely unsupported by mainstream industry and often
beyond the pale of mainstream academia, as well.
J. Baldwin invented (and has built) a permanent,
transparent, insulated structure — of aluminum and
Teflon — he calls a "Pillow Dome," said to have
withstood 135-mph winds and tons of snow. The Pillow
Dome weighs just one-half pound per square foot. The
basic approach has since been applied in large-scale
applications such as the
Eden Project in Cornwall, England. Baldwin continues
to practice design (as exemplified in the unique and
aerodynamic 'mobile-room' Quick-Up camper he has put on
the market) and to teach design at the college level. In
recent years, he has taught at
Sonoma State University and at
California College of Arts & Crafts.
[edit]
Quotes
- "Human handling and manipulating of materials
and the tools that work them, as well as making and
testing your own prototypes, ensures that nothing
gets lost or diluted in the translation from thought
to thing."[citation
needed]
- "Two or three-dimensional CAD renderings can
neither predict nor project complex and often subtle
interactions with the actual world. They can help
refine an idea, but they cannot innovate or identify
opportunities for synergetic advantage."[citation
needed]
[edit]
External links
