BuckMonster Fuller Costume

Buckminster Fuller is one of my heroes. It seemed only right that I should make a silly pun on his name and turn him into my own Halloween costume hybrid, BuckMonster Fuller.

A visionary genius truly ahead of his time, he gave use the Geodesic Dome and Synergistics, and inspired an entire generation of architects and designers to think in terms of scarcity, economy of resources, and sustainability. He spearheaded the global awareness that is now commonplace in the design world and proposed radical technologies and ways of living whose influence is unmistakable in the built world of today.

This costume is pretty simple- it's a papercraft bucky dome with a cut out for your head and googly eyes on the facets to increase the "monster" effect.

There are several different kinds of geodesic domes, but I wanted to go with the Truncated Icosahedron because it has fewer parts to cut and glue. I downloaded one from Thingiverse and brought it into Fusion 360 where I added the recess for my head. It was finished in no time!

I used 123D Make to get the layout fast. It's super easy- you just import your model, pick your material thickness and size, and the app does the work for you. It even gives you dashed lines to show you where the creases are.

To cut out your own, print the PDF at full scale on 24" X 36" paper.

I used a dense chip board for mine, but in hindsight it would have been easier with poster board and would have looked just as good. I used a laser cutter, but this is an easy thing to cut by hand using the template provided and an exacto knife.

The assembly only goes together one way and there are only two pieces, so you can't really mess it up. All you have to do is glue the seams together with a hot glue gun. I gave myself scores so I could place the googly eyes in the center of each facet. The googly eyes have an adhesive backing, but they don't stay put very well so I hot-glued those on too.

Add a suit, tie, and some large framed 60's-ish eye glasses, and the costume is complete. If I were to make it again, I'd probably paint it gold (a lot of his domes were painted gold) and add some more monster-esqe elements; maybe fanged mouths to compliment the googly eyes.