If you've been following me awhile, you've probably noticed Buckminster Fuller (Bucky) is one of my favourite and most frequent referents - there is a very particular reason for this - and it's not what he's best known for. As a designer, he's almost a modern Pythagoras - so unrestrained by previous assumptions and keenly dedicated to widely integrated ideas, that he was forever inventing things which were only practical a few years later, when materials science caught up with him. Always far more interested in the challenge of design-solution and innovation, than commercial exploitation (a highly sympathetic weakness, to be sure).