Russell Z Chu
I
am a carpenter by trade. I worked
in commercial and residential construction. Owned construction company for 12
years. I built our family house in Brazil when I was 15 years old.
I attended UCLA from 1969 to 1973 majoring in Engineering and Design in College of Fine Arts.
I
was first introduced to Buckminster Fuller’s work in a design class where we built
geodesic domes and inflatable structures.
In
1981 after reading Critical Path I started studying Synergetics. I was impressed
with how different the geodesic dome was from prevalent building thinking. I
wanted to understand how Fuller arrived at the geodesic dome concept.
From
my understanding in Synergetics, I collaborated with Tony Gwilliam building
tensegrity systems. We started in
November 1985 and our intent was to use the proceeds from our endeavors to
support works in Synergetics. On December 1986 we applied for a patent and it
was granted on Dec. 8, 1987 patent No. 4,711,062. Our company name was Tensegrity International Inc, in Ojai,
CA. In January 1988 we co-sponsored with BFI a Synergetics Workshop by Yasushi
Kajikawa.
Tensegrity
International designed a foldable tensegrity display system, which we
manufactured and marketed.
On Sep. 26, 1989 I was granted a patent no. 4,869,041 which I called it the
Octet Truss Expansion System. It could be built in any pattern of the isotropic
vector matrix. It is a method of building very large structures, using a robot,
like structures in space. It is based on Fuller’s Miniaturization principle in
Synergetics sec. 740.00. It also
included an improved connecting system for the construction of the octet truss.
I no longer feel it is an advantage to humanity to take out a patent.
I think the freeware and open source code model adopted by some computer
programmers have contributed greatly to the computer revolution.
In
1998 with the creation of Struck program by Gerald DeJong I decided to take
a year and try to write about the connection between the Isotropic Vector Matrix
and Chemical Structures, which I posted on the web.
Contact Information
E-mail: russchu@cox.net