{"id":2020,"date":"2013-07-09T06:30:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T13:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/compositesandarchitecture.com\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2013-07-09T12:46:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T19:46:48","slug":"home-sweet-dome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kreysler.zaab.org\/?p=2020","title":{"rendered":"Home Sweet Dome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Behold one of the great grandmothers of all modern FRP buildings:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Fly\u2019s Eye Dome was visionary designer Buckminster Fuller\u2019s ultimate statement, the culmination (he said) of everything he had learned in fifty years of design, and the thirty-two years before that.\u00a0 Designed in 1980, there were three prototypes built, one each of three sizes: 12\u2019 diameter, 24\u2019, and 50\u2019.\u00a0 The largest one was exhibited at the Los Angeles Bicentennial in 1981, then disassembled and discarded in a field.\u00a0 It remained there for 30 years until it was acquired by architectural curator and historian Robert Rubin, and restored by him.<\/p>\n

The restored 50\u2019 dome was re-assembled for exhibition at the Festival International d\u2019Art in Toulouse, May 24-June 23, 2013, where it was positioned next to the river, an object that still packs futuristic impact standing in dramatic contrast with the centuries\u2019 old buildings surrounding it.<\/p>\n

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Buckminster Fuller with the 24′ dome, and his Dymaxion car, in 1981. The dome is fitted with plexiglas glazing, including a “popped-up” skylight at the top that provides ventilation as well as light.<\/p><\/div>\n

The round openings, which comprise 75% of the surface area, are the conceptual heart of the design.\u00a0 Fuller strove to minimize the closed surface. The deep flanges of the openings give rigidity to the structure. (There are also shallow flanghes between the pieces that allow them to be bolted together.)\u00a0 The openings would be used to provide a variety of functions: doors, windows, skylights, mountings for solar panels, etc. Fuller said in his book Critical Path<\/em>, \u201cAs with the ports and pores of\u00a0all organic systems, the size and shape of these openings sort, sieve and classify the inbound\u00a0and\u00a0outbound\u00a0physical component traffic of metabolic regeneration which the domes embody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuller envisioned this dome as a complete, self-supporting environment, an \u201cautonomous dwelling machine\u201d with three stories containing not only living space but gardens as well. Fuller imagined double-shell structures, utilizing the area between the shells for insulation and mechanical services.\u00a0 In other words, the prototype as-built was a versatile framework, both literally and figuratively, for different applications of the concept.<\/p>\n

Robert Rubin wrote in March 2013:<\/p>\n

Like the\u00a0Maison Tropicale, the dome is best understood as a prototype for an industrialized building\u00a0system that never got off the ground because it was too far ahead of its time (or, as tech\u00a0entrepeneurs today say, \u201ctoo early.\u201d) Coincidentally, there were three tropical house prototypes (one\u00a0deployed to Niamey, two to Brazzaville) and three fly\u2019s eye dome prototypes, of which this one, at a\u00a0diameter of 50\u2019, is the largest. They were preceded by Fuller\u2019s Dymaxion House, another\u00a0exercise in aluminum, which today may be seen at the Ford Museum in Dearborn.\u00a0My fascination with both Fuller and Prouv\u00e9 derives from the artisanal nature of these industrial\u00a0prototypes.\u00a0Each has intriguing evidence of human fallibility embedded in its futuristic beauty.\u00a0For\u00a0example, certain panels had to be \u201cmodified\u201d after the fact because one of the fiberglass molds was\u00a0built without converting degrees to inches.\u00a0In the restoration process, we left clear evidence of this.\u00a0One is reminded that, in the industrial age but\u00a0before the age of computers men\u00a0built things that\u00a0looked like they imagined they ought to look like, and used their head and their hands.\u00a0Not to\u00a0mention whatever was easily at hand at the last minute. (Futurists seem always to be working to\u00a0tight deadlines.) For example, Fuller\u2019s specs called for thin gauge aluminum or poly coated sheet\u00a0steel to reinforce the fiberglass, but they settled for plywood for the prototype. Amazingly, we have\u00a0not needed to replace this material yet. And although the dome has spent three decades\u00a0disassembled in a California field, we needed only replace a few of the fiberglass panels.\u00a0The rest were just fine.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

You can see a video about the assembly of the dome at Toulouse at http:\/\/www.groupe-bovis.com\/fr\/actualites\/mai-13-le-dome-de-buckminster-fuller-installe-a-toulouse\/181\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The blog Quimicamenta Composites<\/a> reports that Goetz Composites, the boat-builder that restored the 24\u2019 Fly’s Eye dome in 2011, scanned all the parts as they repaired the dome, creating 3-D render files, (which they have made available to the\u00a0Buckminster Fuller Institute) that\u00a0offer the possibility of using 21st<\/sup> century digital fabrication techniques to build new domes using state of the art methods.<\/p>\n

Toulouse images via rocknfish.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t\t