Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) served a six-week term as visiting critic at Tulane School of Architecture in February and March of 1954. Fifth-year students worked with Fuller to create this 18 foot geodesic dome model of a potential shelter or airplane maintenance hangar for the Marines. Here students raise the lightweight yet sturdy model on the quad of Tulane's front campus.
The Tulane geodesic dome model was constructed of cardboard formed into triangles, painted with plastic and joined with tape. According to an article in the April 1954 edition of The Tulanian, the dome was to be packaged and sent to the military base at Quantico, Virginia accompanied by Dean John Ekin Dinwiddie and several students. They would reassemble the model there for military inspection and it would soon undergo mass production.
I am not sure if the geodesic domes ever went into military production. However in 1958 Fuller returned to Louisiana to construct the Union Tank Car Dome outside Baton Rouge. Upon completion the 384 foot diameter dome was the largest clear span structure in the world and the largest structure of its type.
Tomorrow night please join AIA New Orleans and DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana in a free screening and the Louisiana premiere of director Evan Mather's
A NECCESSARY RUIN: THE STORY OF BUCKMINSTER FULLER AND THE UNION TANK CAR DOME
Wednesday September 8, 2010
Reception at 7, Screening at 8
AIA New Orleans Center for Design
1000 St. Charles Avenue
The Tulane geodesic dome model was constructed of cardboard formed into triangles, painted with plastic and joined with tape. According to an article in the April 1954 edition of The Tulanian, the dome was to be packaged and sent to the military base at Quantico, Virginia accompanied by Dean John Ekin Dinwiddie and several students. They would reassemble the model there for military inspection and it would soon undergo mass production.
I am not sure if the geodesic domes ever went into military production. However in 1958 Fuller returned to Louisiana to construct the Union Tank Car Dome outside Baton Rouge. Upon completion the 384 foot diameter dome was the largest clear span structure in the world and the largest structure of its type.
Tomorrow night please join AIA New Orleans and DOCOMOMO US/Louisiana in a free screening and the Louisiana premiere of director Evan Mather's
A NECCESSARY RUIN: THE STORY OF BUCKMINSTER FULLER AND THE UNION TANK CAR DOME
Wednesday September 8, 2010
Reception at 7, Screening at 8
AIA New Orleans Center for Design
1000 St. Charles Avenue
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