The 'Cuboctahedron' or 'Equilibrium Vector' is an Archimedean solid that can be obtained by truncating a cube by planes perpendicular to the diagonals that pass through the midpoints of three concurrent edges. It then has 14 faces, 6 squares, remains of the faces of the cube and with half its area, and 8 equilateral triangles.

An interesting characteristic of the cuboctahedron is that the distance from the center to the vertices, the radius of the circumscribed sphere, is equal to the length of the edges.

It was at the beginning of the 20th century when an American architect, visionary and designer named Richard Buckminster Fuller became fascinated with this form that he called Vector balance.

The Vector Equilibrium, as its name describes it, is the only geometric form in which all vectors are of equal length. This includes both from its center to its circumferential vertices, and the edges (vectors) that connect all of those vertices.

Richard discovered that this shape, through different rotating patterns, becomes each of the five Platonic solids.

This form seems to have them all contained within itself.

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