Restoration of Buckminster Fuller’s iconic Fly’s Eye Dome at America’s Cup. Goetz Composites, fabricators of some of the most successful race boats in the world including three of today’s most high profile yachts as well as ten America’s Cup racing yachts completed a historic restoration of one of Buckminster Fuller‘s most iconic structures, the 24 foot Fly’s Eye Dome.
Patented in 1965, Fuller created two prototypes of this structure; a 24 foot and 50 foot dome. Fuller writes in his seminal book, Critical Path that “the Fly’s Eye domes are designed as part of a ‘livingry’ service. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming light and wind energies.”
More images and information after the break. “Having the Bucky Dome at our shop has been fun and a broadening experience. ASM International World Headquarters Renovation / The Chesler Group and Dimit Architects. The ASM International World Headquarters, originally constructed in 1959, is an architectural composition by two influential designers during the mid-twentieth century: John Terence Kelly, who studied under Bauhaus-founder Walter Gropius, and R.
Buckminster Fuller, well known for his geodesic domes, environmentally-conscious designs and the dymaxion car. The complex includes the building, dome and garden on the 45-acre site known as Materials Park. The renovation, led by The Chesler Group and Dimit Architects, brings new life to Kelly’s building. According to Architectural Record, (Snapshot, Laura Raskin), Michael Chesler of The Chesler Group, campaigned to salvage the architectural marvel, giving it a place in the National Register of Historic Places and using tax credits to fund the renovation. SFMoMA Exhibit: “The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area” If you are in the Bay Area this weekend, we recommend you stop in at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and check out their current exhibit The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area.
This exhibition is the first of its kind, featuring Buckminster Fuller’s most iconic projects as well a focus on his local design legacy in the Bay Area. Though he was never a resident, Fuller’s ideas inspired many local experiments in the realms of technology, engineering and sustainability. Continue reading for more information. Fuller’s imaginative works will be represented primarily with prints from the Inventions: Twelve Around One portfolio (1981), as well as several key works on loan from the R.
Buckminster Fuller Archive at Stanford University. “Fuller’s eccentric views were informed by speculating on future technologies, not past history,” says SFMOMA Acting Department Head/Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, who organized the event. “Everything I Know”: 42 Hours of Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller’s 50-Foot “Fly’s Eye” Dome to be Restored. Noted architectural historian and preservationist Robert Rubin has purchased the largest of Buckmister Fuller’s ”Fly’s Eye” domes and plans to reopen it to the public this summer for the first time in 30 years.
More on Fuller’s dome and its new owner after the break… One of the last of Fuller’s visionary projects, the “Fly’s Eye” dome was designed to be an autonomous dwelling. In his book Critical Path, Fuller describes the project as a culmination of “all that I had learned not only throughout [the] fifty year development period, but in all my thirty-two earlier years.”
Standing at 50-feet tall, the structure takes its name from the cylindrical openings which puncture the dome and give it its rigidity. Rubin is seemingly the perfect candidate to own this Bucky dome; he has a passion for the work of mavericks, as well as a healthy track record when it comes to studying, restoring and sharing modernist architecture. His new purchase is one of only three fly’s eye domes designed by Fuller. AD Classics: The Dymaxion House / Buckminster Fuller. The Dymaxion House was a futuristic dwelling invented by the architect and practical philosopher R.
Buckminister Fuller – who would have turned 118 today. The word “Dymaxion,” which combines the words dynamic, maximum and tension, was coined (among many others) by Fuller himself. In 1920 Fuller wished to build a sustainable autonomous single family dwelling, the living machine of the future. Although never built, the Dymaxion’s design displayed forward-thinking and influential innovations in prefabrication and sustainability.
Not only would the house have been exemplary in its self-sufficiency, but it also could have been mass-produced, flat-packaged and shipped throughout the world. More on this revolutionary design after the break… The 100 sqm hexagonal house was an earthquake and storm resistant structure, supported by a central pole from which cables would be suspended, allowing the outer walls to be non-bearing. Architects: Buckminster Fuller Area: 100.0 sqm Year: 1920. The Buckminster Fuller Institute. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Biography.