A Necessary Ruin: The Story of Buckminster Fuller and the Union Tank Car Dome

A Necessary Ruin: The Story of Buckminster Fuller and the Union Tank Car Dome, originally uploaded by regional.modernism.

DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana and AIA New Orleans present
"A Necessary Ruin: The Story of Buckminster Fuller and the Union Tank Car Dome" 
a documentary film by Evan Mather
Wednesday September 8
reception @ 7pm, screening @ 8pm
AIA New Orleans Center for Design
1000 St. Charles Avenue


Upon its completion in October 1958, the Union Tank Car Dome, located north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was the largest clear-span structure in the world. Based on the engineering principles of the visionary design scientist and philosopher Buckminster Fuller, this geodesic dome was, at 384 feet in diameter, the first large scale example of this building type. A Necessary Ruin relates the powerful, compelling narrative of the dome’s history via interviews with architects, engineers, preservationists, media, and artists; animated sequences demonstrating the operation of the facility; and hundreds of rare photographs and video segments taken during the dome’s construction, decline, and demolition. (Evan Mather, U.S.A., 2009, 29:54)


hand crafted films