Buckminster Fuller Did Not Invent the "Geodesic Dome"
Nor did he invent "tensegrity" structures, his Dymaxion car was a deathtrap, his plan for a dome covering Manhattan was ludicrous, and his Biosphere dome at the Montreal Expo was a disaster.
Sorry, Bucky fans, but hear me out. This is one of the only places where you’re likely to hear the true but sad extent of (some of) Fuller’s misrepresentations and flawed designs. It seems that 99% of what you read about him is positive.
I was a fan for years. I believed what he said about geodesic domes and in fact, spent five years building them and published the seminal book on the subject, Domebook 2 (which sold 160,000 copies). After 5 years of dome building, I realized they didn’t work as homes and took Domebook 2 out of print.
See my post:
Bucky took out a patent for what he called “geodesic domes” in 1955. The domes were based on a subdivided icosahedron, the most complex of the five Platonic solids.
I did some investigative journalism in 1972 in writing the lead article for what we called Domebook 3, a subdivision of our 1973 book Shelter.
It turned out that a German dome, hailed as “The Wonder of Jena,” was built in 1922 on the roof of the Carl Zeiss optical works in Jena, Germany. It was of icosahedral design.
Zeiss had invented a planetarium projector with an icosahedral pattern of 31 lenses, meant to project the stars and planets on the interior of a dome. The dome was built with the same icosahedral geometry as the projector.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/planetarium-history
It’s a long story, which you can see on pp. 110-119 of Shelter. It includes my correspondence with scientists at the Zeiss Works, who wrote ”…at that time it was the principle of our firm, that such basic findings should be made available to the whole scientific world, so it may well be that nothing was patented in Germany.”
Dome nuts (as I once was): See Refried Domes, my reassessment of polyhedral home design. Just sayin…
Once I learned of this scam of Fuller’s, I started re-assessing his more well-known designs. A few are listed below.
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
-George Santayana
The Dymaxion Car, 1933
A poorly-desighed rip-off of the 1913 Alfa Romeo Castagna Aerodinamica, below.
Note: See the Zoox, Amazon’s new self-driving vehicles (which are now operating in San Francisco) for similarities to the above, 113 years later!
On October 27, 1933, one of the Dymaxion cars rolled over, killing the driver and seriously injuring two passengers. A year or so later, Fuller crashed one of these with his daughter Alexandra aboard.
The Tensegrity Mast
Fuller did not invent the tensegrity sphere nor the tensegrity mast, both of which he claimed credit for. They were invented by a student of his at Black Mountain College, artist Kenneth Snelson.”
I visited Snelson in his New York studio in the early 70s and he confirmed that Fuller had misrepresented his designs as his own.
What Fuller did do here was clever though, coining the term “tensegrity” from “tension” and “structural integrity.”
The Montreal Expo Dome, 1967
I was driving across Canada in 1967, delivering a school bus (that had a governor allowing it to go only 55 mph) from Toronto to Nova Scotia, where I was heading to help Stewart Brand build the foundation for a new home.
I had my son Peter, 12 years old, with me and we stopped in at the Expo. I’d seen pictures of the dome, and it looked spectacular.
Surprise! It was a pretty total disaster. The shades never worked and the only reason it wasn’t boiling hot inside was a 650 hp diesel generator in the basement providing air conditioning — the irony of a building hailed as “environmental” burning huge quantities of oil to compensate for faulty design.
It leaked. I took pictures of algae growing around the base.
And about the final fire that destroyed it in 1976:
“…one of architecture’s most dramatic disasters — and it exposed a critical design flaw baked into the structure from the start."
“The original dome was sheathed in a geometric tessellation of clear acrylic panels fitted over the steel trusses, giving it the appearance of a giant glittering jewel. Acrylic (polymethyl methacrylate) is notoriously flammable — it ignites readily, burns hot, and spreads flame rapidly across connected surfaces. On a structure the size of a 20-story sphere, a single ignition point from a welding torch essentially became a fuse for the entire skin. The interconnected panel geometry, while visually spectacular, meant there was no firebreak anywhere across the vast surface.”
“…acrylic is a petroleum-derived plastic whose combustion released considerable toxic smoke over Île Sainte-Hélène.”
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/give-me-any-info-on-fire-destr-3IPsUosgR3.fhATiaqwgTQ
Lastly, Fuller’s idea for a dome over NYC. Are you kidding? Keeping in all the smog and exhaust, keeping out rain and snow and wind?
“Spaceship earth?” Don’t get me started!
So there you have it. I just felt these flaws had to be pointed out in view of Fuller’s canonization.
I'm struck by the #1 street cred of all time! Front row at Esalen in 1967, just can't be beat. When someone says "I was at Woodstock", oh yea Esalen 67, with old lady in tow! Lololol jajajaja kkkkkk
Thanks for the honesty! Many people would have been to embarrassed to admit to this truth in your place, so a sincere hat tip for that & also thanks for the great info!