"[Fuller] begins with a distinction between stoutness and weight... [and] segue[s] into the abstract notion of stoutness that he defined as 'great power, but no weight....'
- Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance, MIT Press 2009, p. 119 |
"Fuller pursued his goal along many paths.... A major achievement was the development of the geodesic dome, a hemispherical self-supporting structure..."
- Becoming Bucky Fuller by Loretta Lorance, MIT Press 2009, p. ix
Bucky Fuller is universally acknowledged as the inventor of the Geodesic Dome, yet the photo from Popular Mechanics, September 1929, was taken in 1922. At the
time of its publication the dome had already been destroyed.
This issue of Popular Mechanics is an example of the periodicals Bucky Fuller read. We know, since he clipped and saved many articles relevant
to homes and their construction. Chicago was to be the first city in the U.S.A. to have its own
planetarium, so local Chicago periodicals such as the
Chicago Tribune and Popular Mechanics featured regular, extensive
coverage about
this new inventions and its wonders.
Built in 1922, the dome's metal latticework was covered with a thin concrete shell. Walther Bauersfeld (1879 - 1959), a German engineer employed by the
Zeiss Corporation, created it to test the original planetarium projection machine.
The concrete was then covered in tar paper. Courtesy Zeiss Inc.
Its metal-skeleton, 82 feet in diameter, required fewer materials and so
was light enough to stand on the Zeiss factory roof, while still being
strong enough and wide enough to house a sizable audience. Plus, its
surface was very smoothly rounded to project and admire the celestial
bodies projected by the Zeiss method, producing an otherworldly effect.
In 1927, Fuller was seeking inspirations for his new house architecture. He may have read this October 1927 report about the planned Chicago planetarium. He probably saw the December 1927 Sunday section which featured other German Planetarium Buildings.
The above photo ran with three others in the December 4th Sunday photo section. While Bucky often clipped photos from these full page spreads, he did not select this page to add to his Chronofile scrapbook.
This photo, unpublished at the time, shows details of the triangulated structure, strong enough to hold fourteen men. [2] Bauersfeld's geometry differs from Fuller's modified icosahedron. Yet Fuller at the time was not thinking of such a geometry. Inspired by trees, radio antennas and close-packed spheres, he was committed at the start of his journey to a "house on a stick", a central trunk supporting decks by tension wires. He clipped many examples of structures that helped
Loretta Lorance transcribed the entire list of references that Bucky drew upon for his housing innovation. In the late 1920's he was inspired by trees, stainless steel and radio antennas. It was not until a decade later that he broadened his search for a lightweight shelter into great circles and polyhedra, and in the end re-discovered the fine lattice that Zeiss had long ago built and torn down from their factory rooftop.
Links and References
[1] http://www.geodesicdome.info/index.php/walther-bauersfeld
See also http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/domes/domehist.html
[2] Photo from Shelter by Kahn and Easton
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