Artifacts of R Buckminster Fuller

Volume Three. The Geodesic Revolution, Part 1, 1947--1959

James Ward (Editor)

Garland Publishing, Inc. | New York and London

ISBN:

ISBN-10: 0-8240-5084-3

Updated: 2024-07-14 19:20

Copyright © 1985

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

ENCODED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

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THE ARTIFACTS OF

R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

A Comprehensive Collection of His Designs and Drawings in Four Volumes

Edited with descriptions by James Ward

A Garland Series

Volume One. The Dymaxion Experiment, 1926--1943

Volume Two. Dymaxion Deployment, 1927--1946

Volume Three. The Geodesic Revolution, Part 1, 1947--1959

Volume Four. The Geodesic Revolution, Part 2, 1960--1983

THE ARTIFACTS OF

R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Volume Three: The Geodesic Revolution

Part 1, 1947--1959

Edited with descriptions by James Ward

Garland Publishing, Inc.

New York and London 1985

ABOUT THE EDITOR

James Ward is presently a visiting professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. He studied engineering as an undergraduate and received his Ph.D. in the history of art from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. His dissertation was on Le Corbusier’s villa, Les Terrasses.

He has published articles on early modern architecture in Europe and has compiled a directory of New York architects before World War II.

Copyright © 1984 by the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Fuller, R. Buckminster (Richard Buckminster), 1895-

The artifacts of R. Buckminster Fuller.

Includes bibliographies.

Contents: v. 1. The Dymaxion experiment, 1926-1943--- v. 2. Dymaxion deployment, 1927---1946 --- v. 3. The geodesic revolution, part 1, 1947---1959 --- [etc.]

1. Engineering design---Collected works. 2. Fuller, R. Buckminster (Richard Buckminster), 1895--- ---

collected works. I. Ward. James. II. Title. TA174.F86 1984 620'.00425 84-21039

ISBN 0-8240-5084-3 (v. 3: alk paper)

Book design by Jonathan Billing

The volumes in this series have been printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper.

Printed in the United States of America

Maquettes for Early Geodesic Domes 1

Preparatory Studies for the Geodesic Dome:

The Icosahedron’s Thirty-one Great Circles, 1947 5

Great Circle Mapping Device Booklet, Late 1940s 11

Dymaxion Geodesic Structures: Twenty-five and Thirty-one Great Circles, 1949 20

Plastic Model of a Pan-Type Geodesic Structure, Thirty-one Great Circles 24

Geodesic Structures: ‘‘Noah’s Ark II,’’ 1950 31

Miscellaneous Geodesic Structures, 1950

Miscellaneous Geodesic Structures, 1951

90 Percent Automatic Cotton Mill, School of Design, North Carolina State College, 1951

Skybreaks, 1951 76

Proposed Sixty-four-Foot Diameter Skybreak for Aspen, Colorado, Skybreak Corporation of Carolina, 1951 77

Sixteen-Frequency Geodespherical Skybreak: Icosahedronal Adaptation, 1951 78

Proposal: A Geodesic Hangar, 1951 80

Eighty-Foot Skybreak (Maquette), Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, 1952 82

Geodesic Skybreaks, Drawn by J. Rauma at M.I.T., 1952 83

Twenty-Foot Globe of Wooden Slats, Cornell University, 1952 86

Vortexial Vertexes, Fuller Houses, Inc., 1952

Sixteen-Frequency Chord Factors, 1952 95

Spherical Truss for the Ford Motor Company Courtesy Building, 1952--1953 96

Experimental Greenhouse, School of Design, North Carolina State College, 1953 152

Dome Project, University of Minnesota, School of Architecture, Winter---Spring Quarter, 1953 159

Geodesic Dome, University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, 1953 169

Octahedron-Tetrahedron Truss, 1953 176

Proposal for a Service Garage, New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, Hyannis, Massachusetts, 1953 177

Geodesic Radome for Project Lincoln, M.I.T., 1953 179

Discontinuous Compression Sphere, School of Architecture, Princeton University, 1953

Radomes, 1954 184

Fifty-Foot Magnesium Geodesic Hangar for the U.S. Marine Corps, 1954 186

Tenting for the Fifty-Foot Magnesium Hangar for the U.S. Marine Corps, 1954 199

Geodesic Dome Patent, 6/29/54 200

Geodesic Dome, Set of Four Studies, 1954

‘‘Skyeye’’ Radio Telescope, Designed with Charles Eames, 1954 206

Fifty-five-Foot Geodesic Dome Hangar, U.S. Marine Corps, 1954--1955 208

Radomes, 1954--1956 209

Thirty-one-Foot Radome on the Hex-Pent Pattern (Lincoln), 1954 213

Diamond B Fifty-Foot Base Diameter Radome, 1954 216

Hex A Fifty-Foot Base Diameter Fuller Radome, 1954 217

Spider A Fifty-Foot Base Diameter Radome, 1954 219

Radome Door Handle, 1954 220

Twenty-one-Foot Fuller Radome on the Hex-Pent Pattern (Lincoln), 1954 221

Fuller Radomes (General): Flanges and Panels, 1954 223

Fuller Radomes (General): Warehouse Preliminary 112-Foot Diameter, 1954

TRIC Structural System, 1954 234

Dome Units for Geodesics (Paperboard), Mid 1950s 237

Triennale, Milan, Exposition Domes, 1954: Eight-Frequency Fiberboard Plastic Geodesic Structure, Thirty-six-Foot Diameter; Sixteen-Frequency Fiberboard Plastic Geodesic Structure, Seventy-two- Foot Diameter 239

Fastener Cam for Radomes, 1955 241

117-Foot Geodesic Dome, Six-Plane

Maintenance Hangar, 1955 242

Fifty-five-Foot Geodesic Hangar, 1955 275

Fifty-Foot Base Diameter Radome, 1955

Fastener Pin A, 1955 289

Forty-Foot Paperboard Dome, 1955 290

Door Handle Assembly for a Radome,

1955 299

U.S. Marine Corps---F.F. 42V2 S. Preliminary, 1955 300

Thirty-two-Foot-Diameter Rigid Radome, 1955 301

Homestyle Center Foundation, Geodesic Dome House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1955 304

Final Version of the Radome (Fifty-Foot Diameter): Flange and Vertex Details, 1955 306

Homestyle Center Foundation, Geodesic Exhibition House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1956 335

U.S. Air Force, Rome Air Development Center, Rome, New York, 1955 338

Swimming Pool Designs, 1955 & 1956 355

Geodesic Dome Greenhouse, 1956 357

Paperboard Dome, 1956 358

Geodesic Dome: Outdoor Circle Theater, San Mateo County, California, 1956 362

Plydome Studies, 1956 363

100-Foot Geodesic Trade Fair Dome (Pictures), 1956 370

Ten-Foot-Diameter Sphere to Stand in the 100-Foot Geodesic Dome at the Bangkok Trade Fair, Designed and Executed by Duncan Stuart, 1956 373

Ball Park Intended for the Yomiuri Giants, Tokyo, 1956 375

Geodesic Office Building for the Savogran Company, Norwood, Massachusetts, 1957 379

Union Tank Car Company, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Dome and Exedra, 1957 380

Twenty-nine-Foot-Diameter Plydome, 1957 386

Ski Lodge Design No. 2, Wurster-Bernardi & Emmons, Architects, 1957 390

Fifty-five-Foot and Thirty-six-Foot Diameter Geodesic Frame and Sheet Domes, 1957 392

Typical Raft System for Thirty-six-Foot Homasote, 1958 398

Octahedron Truss, 1959 399

Paperboard Dome Patent, 4/14/59 401

Plydome Patent, 9/22/59 403

Catenary Geodesic Tent Patent, 11/24/59 405

U.S. Air Force Academy Field House, 1959 407

Museum of Modern Art Octahedron-Tetrahedron Truss and Tensegrity Mast, 1959 410

Tensegrity Mast Installation at MOMA, 1959 413

Dome by Synergetics for the North American Aviation Company, Erected over the Buildings and Grounds of the National Headquarters of the American Society for Metals, Cleveland, Ohio, 1959 415

List of Figures

List of Tables

Chapter 1 Maquettes for Early Geodesic Domes

Buckminster Fuller geodesic spheres, 31 and 25 great circles.

Pentagon necklace structure, Black Mountain College, N.C., February 1949.

Pneumatic skin hex-pent involute, Black Mountain College, N.C., 1949.

Autonomous dome developed for U.S. Air Force, 1949.

Autonomous dome (maquette). Black Mountain College, N.C.

4 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

Autonomous dome (model), Black Mountain College, N.C.

Chapter 2 Preparatory Studies for the Geodesic Dome: The Icosahedron’s Thirty-one Great Circles 1947

Fuller’s invention of the geodesic dome is closely related to his invention of the Dymaxion World Map (ca. 1946). The studies of the thirty-one great circles that Fuller made and had copyrighted in 1947 initially were total abstractions; later he adapted them to his method of transcribing the surface of the earth to a flat surface. He diagrammed this method in a sketchbook entitled ‘‘Noah’s Ark II’’ (1950), now preserved in the Fuller archive. Further proof of the interrelation between the Fuller geodesic domes and his map, which he began in 1943, is the wood slat globe that he had built at Cornell University in 1952 with metal appliques that represent the land masses of the earth.

6 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

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12 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

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Chapter 4 Dymaxion Geodesic Structures: Twenty-five and Thirty-one Great Circles 1949

Architecturally, the great circles represent the vector equilibrium and the icosahedron that became the chief models for Fuller’s structural designs. His purely geometric constructions had been presented as an analog of nature’s energy continuum. However, Fuller eventually developed a concrete means to translate the great circles (twenty-five and thirty-one) into architecture in 1949. These complex designs comprise two simple components: the strut and the hub (of which one finds eight distinct types). But despite the specificity of these designs, one gets no idea of how the struts were to be fastened to the hubs, nor the materials to be employed. These blueprints represent the structural transition between the intellectual geometry of the sphere and its concrete manifestation in the geodesic domes.

Chapter 5 Plastic Model of a Pan-Type Geodesic Structure, Thirty-one Great Circles

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The materialization of the great circles was achieved in Fuller’s sketchbook ‘‘Noah’s Ark II’’ which alludes to the teleological role he expected his applied geometry' eventually would play. However, even the figurative buoyancy connoted by this title would become literal in Fuller’s later schemes for floating cities. In this sketchbook are the first studies of the hardware and materials that would make the domes a palpable reality. Among these studies are such structural formulas as the three- way geodesic grid; the six-diamond structure; the three- way eight-space grid; the high-speed expanding, skinned, and trussed three-way geodesic structure; the zigzag assembly; and the ‘‘A’’ and ‘‘B’’ zigzag strips. These templates of 1950 would inform a host of projects over the next quarter century.

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4S THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

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COPYRIGHT 1450

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EULER'S LAW ■ *•«---» . •« f*

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FULLER RESEARCH FOUNDATION

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68 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

The two most important copyrights of 1951 are (1) the general structure of the typical geodesic dome and (2) the specific design of an aluminum vertex. The eightfrequency geodesphere reveals the dual nature of the domes at this stage. It comprises a wooden armature of stacked pentagons, all but one of which are of equal size. The open spaces of this armature are filled by pentagonal panels that project outward with a single vertex. One drawing of this group indicates that the struts are substantial rectangles of solid wood. On the contrary, Fuller’s cast aluminum hub and tube terminal allowed the much faster construction of an aluminum dome that was also much lighter than its wooden counterpart. The assembly of a dome with hubs that called for the fastening of struts to specific points on the hub also entailed many inexpedient readjustments. However, the new aluminum hubs held the flanges on the ends of a strut like a spring clamp that was permanently tightened only after all struts were in place. The design of this hub made it possible to construct geodesic domes on a much larger scale than those made of wood.

Miscellaneous

Geodesic Structures 1951

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90 Percent Automatic Cotton Mill, School of Design, North Carolina State College 1951

This hivelike geodesic factory is the quintessence of Fuller’s industrial design strategy, inasmuch as its production was to exceed its expenditure of energy by a wide margin. Illuminated by an omphaloslike opening at the apex of a geodesic dome, the raw cotton was then picked, carded, drawn, roved, spun, spooled, slashed, warped, creeled, loomed, and cleaned in this automatic wonder; unfortunately, only a maquette of the factory was ever executed. The eight floors were supported on cantilevered trusses; the dome provided auxiliary support. The single figure depicted on each floor indicates the drastic reduction in the cost of labor such automation might have effected.

74 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

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Skybreaks

1951

The architectural importance of the geodesic dome was never more tellingly presented than in this drawing of a skybreak for a theater in Aspen, Colorado. Designed to hold a cantilevered sun screen, the transparent dome is shown superimposed above the testudinate structure it was designed to replace. Fuller’s dome would have eliminated the visual obstruction attending the columnar supports of the traditional structure and would have cost less to build.

Proposed Sixty-four-Foot

Diameter Skybreak for Aspen, Colorado

Skybreak Corporation

of Carolina, 1951

Sixteen-F requency

Geodespherical Skybreak: Icosahedronal Adaptation 1951

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A Geodesic Hangar 1951

Fuller designed this hangar with students at M.LT. in 1951 and produced a concept that would lead eventually to his long affiliation with the U.S. Marine Corps. This design surpassed in economy even the elegant reinforced concrete hangars produced by Pierluigi Nervi in wartime Italy because Fuller proposed that they be constructed entirely of styrofoam, tubular aluminum, or superimposed diamonds of fiberglass laminate. Large spherical segments on two sides served as doors that could be rolled open on a tract contiguous with the hangar’s circumference.

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Illi

Eighty-Foot Skybreak

(Maquette)

Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, 1952

Geodesic Skybreaks Drawn by J. Rauma at M.I.T. 1952

These drawings are important inasmuch as they show an elaborate adaptation of the geodesic dome into a dwelling unit. Fuller himself had produced only one such model for the U.S. Air Force before 1950. perhaps because he was chiefly interested in the geometry' of the domes and in the development of new techniques for their inexpensive construction. The maquette of a similar dwelling made by Fuller ca. 1949 and exhibited at the Museum of Modem Art in New York in 1952 is the ultimate source of the drawings by Rauma.

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Twenty-Foot Globe of Wooden Slats, Cornell University 1952

Fuller designed this globe for Cornell University in 1952 chiefly to convey the idea of the thirty-one great circles. Shoji Sadao, Fuller’s future partner, then a student of architecture, was a member of the group that built the globe of wooden slats, metal tacks, and bronze mesh representations of the major land masses.

Vortexial Vertexes Fuller Houses, Inc. 1952

These sketches show Fuller’s experiment with the design of a vertex that could be precise, strong, and flexible. The result is a prototype of five metal sockets hinged to each other in a pentagonal configuration, from which wooden struts would radiate.

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Sixteen- F requency

Chord Factors 1952

These chords embody the geometric formula for a geodesic dome.

Spherical Truss for the Ford Motor Company Courtesy Building 1952-1953

This aluminum and polyester dome (spanning a ninety- three-foot rotunda of the Ford Motor Company’s Courtesy Building in Dearborn, Michigan) weighs only eight and a half tons but changed the course of modern architecture. It represents the first major corporate sponsorship of an architectural principle, which, though over a quarter of a century old, was still extremely futuristic as of 1953. Triangular subassemblies of aluminum make up the fifteen tetrahedra of the larger triangular trusses that are connected to hubs and clad in polyester resin. The success of the geodesic dome can be attributed in part to the stunning photograph of this advanced crystalline hemisphere published in Life magazine. More important than its scale and size was the fact that this dome became like an icon of the Ford Motor Company and a harbinger of the corporate patronage of modern architecure that occurred across the country shortly thereafter.

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THE GEODESIC REVOLUTIOxN, PART 1 137

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146 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

148 THE GEODESIC REVOLUTION, PART 1

Experimental

Greenhouse, School of

Design, North Carolina State College 1953

The experimental greenhouse erected at North Carolina State College was an academic exercise for Fuller’s students to test the feasibility of the Skybreak designs that preceded it. Its wooden structure was hoisted and supported on a single mast and provided support for two veils of suspended Saran that served both as insulation and fenestration.

DETAIL 3

SCALE • </2 EULL sac

patterns for S' RADIUS skin

SARAN SKIN PATTERNS

Dome Project, University of Minnesota, School of Architecture

Winter---Spring Quarter, 1953

The Fuller dome at the University of Minnesota was relatively large for an academic experiment, comprising ten wooden subdivisions. All wooden components were color coded according to their dimension in this first realization of an idea that dates to 1951.

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Geodesic Dome, University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts

The dome executed by students of the University of Oregon in 1953 is distinguished from the other academic experiments by two features---its exterior geodesic ladder that conforms to the curvature of the hemisphere and its pentagonal door.

1953

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Octahedron-Tetrahedron

Truss

1953

The invention of the octahedron-tetrahedron truss was a concurrent development to that of the geodesic dome in the architectural career of Buckminster Fuller. It was employed almost immediately after its invention in the design of the new service garage for the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company of Hyannis, Massachusetts, and provided both shelter for the automobiles and support for the overhead doors. The truss is aluminum; the walls are cinder block; and the whole structure is protected from the elements with a coating of latex vinyl.

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Proposal for a Service Garage, New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, Hyannis, Massachusetts 1953

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Geodesic Radome for Project Lincoln, M.LT. 1953

The radome was developed by Fuller and his students at M.LT. in December 1953 as Project Lincoln, Fuller’s first design for the defense of the United States during the Cold War. The term ‘‘radome’’ alludes to radar protection. Bell Laboratories and Western Electric manufactured these structures to house radar equipment along the Distant Early Warning line during the 1950s. They are geodesic domes composed of rigid sheets of fiberglass in hexagonal and pentagonal forms, the flanges of which are lined with plastic gaskets and are latched or bolted together. Thus there is no need of a metal or wooden superstructure, reducing the overall weight and cost but none of the dome’s compressive strength.

Discontinuous

Compression Sphere,

School of Architecture,

Princeton University

1953

Tensegrity, a concept Fuller explored during the late forties, obtained its maximum coherence in his erection of the discontinuous compression and continuous tension sphere at Princeton University in 1953. Made up of ninety aluminum pipe struts held in place with tense wire cables projecting from each end, this seemingly magical, dematerialized orb was rebuilt later in 1959 and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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These light fiberglass components were much easier to assemble with plastic pins and comma-shaped cams than they were to design. Every angle and dimension were critical to structural integrity.

Radomes

1954

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Fifty-Foot Magnesium Geodesic Hangar for the U.S. Marine Corps 1954

These helicopter hangars are developments of the earlier ones, but they are smaller, less expensive, and can actually be transported by the vehicles they were designed to house. The structure is magnesium extruded struts and is covered by tent material tailored somewhat like a Dymaxion World Map. This fabric cover is zipped into a shape that conforms perfectly to the contours of the dome. The popular image of these hangers dangling from helicopters was prescient of Fuller’s later design for superbuoyant spherical cities, the vast weights of which would be sufficiently lighter than the surrounding atmosphere to produce the largest dirigibles ever designed.

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