CHARAS (an acronym based on the founders’ first names: Chino García, Humberto Crespo, Angelo González, Roy Batiste, Anthony Figueroa, and Sal Becker) was an initiative that stemmed from the Real Great Society, a group of former gang members who organized community services on the Lower East Side (LES), in New York City, under the War on Poverty in the 1960s. During the 1970s, they worked with Buckminster Fuller’s crew to build experimental dymaxion dome structures on vacant lots on the LES sector. CHARAS also formed alliances working on a community garden on Ninth Street in which Liz Christy, founder of the Green Guerrillas, and artist Gordon Matta-Clark, were partners.R. Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, and visionary. He was concerned with the chance of the lasting and successful survival of humanity on Earth. Considering himself an average individual without special monetary means or academic degrees, he chose to devote his life to this question, trying to identify what he, as an individual, could do to improve the human condition, which large organizations, governments, and private enterprises inherently could not do. Most of his inventions, however, never made it into production. Often dismissed as a hopeless utopian, he was strongly criticized in most fields he tried to influence, including architecture. His proponents, on the other hand, continue to assert that his work has not yet received the attention that it deserved, to the point where he was featured in Artforum (Vol. 47, No. 3, November 2008) for his prognostications regarding global warming, geopolitics, and both his design and architectural solutions.