I attended University in Nebraska during the 1970s. Bucky Fuller was often around giving public lectures. I think I attended five brilliant presentations always with people standing and cheering at the end. He gave a strong arrangement against military and war that I only now really appreciate. Thanks alway for your great revisit of the past. I think the Anhisier Bush Green House in St. Louis, if it is still standing is his best domed building.
The Climatron in the Missouri Botanical Gardens is still fully functional in STL. It’s a wonderful space with lots of tropical plants to walk around and view
Fun fact, living in a Geodesic Dome growing up, there is little sound privacy inside. Sound travels easily from one side of the house to the other if there aren't any ceilings blocking it.
Best to have a ground Floor or two level dome where some privacy and sound insulation is possible. Heating and cooling present a few more problems with the domed area having so much volume.
Are there rooms inside them? Are they really just cubicles, with walls that don't go to the ceiling? The carpentry skills required to properly divide a geodesic dome into living quarters for multiple people seems... large.
My father was an architect and a huge fan of Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller. Growing up, instead of “Monkey Bars” in our back yard, we had a 12 foot diameter geodesic dome to climb on.
The bathroom design is one that I wish actually existed now. The sink design in particular-I have fibromyalgia from spinal injuries and that sink was designed for bathing children safely with a straight back and was absolute genius! I also love the seamless bathroom unit for ease of cleaning in general
What killed the geodesic domes for private homes was building codes. Just as with ground sheltered homes, it's a hassle to convince local jurisdictions to let you build one.
Amazing man--met him once at his home on an island here in Maine. Very gracious and welcoming--and brilliant-guy. I've been in a dozen or more large domes over the years. The structures have challenges-they are very labor intensive, though materials economical and build practices and quality can vary widely. Adapting them for human use has huge challenges. Typical building needs for being weatherproof and having natural light (opening windows), access, ventilation (HVAC penetrations), insulation, exterior finishes etc. are very difficult to establish effectively. As are interior walls/flat surfaces commonly used in modern living for partitions, hanging stuff, cabinets, counters, built-ins, closets etc. Open areas are easier yet have alot of unusable space due to the constant curvature of the exterior walls. There's A GOOD REASON that man/womankind has evolved to using flat surfaces.
Yeah, and he didn't hesitate to steal ideas like Tensegrity from his students (Dymaxion concept and name came from two ad-men, not Fuller). He was a philanderer and had many affairs with married women. He cheated on his wife Anne Hewlett many times. So was he smart? Certainly. Was he A Great Man? Nah.
I’ve built two domes, one a home in north Idaho. I know the larger one has been up over 20 years doing great. The frame went up on one day. The sheeting another 3. We took a week or more on the roofing. Two guys who had never built a house built it in a month part time.
The picture also showed the main weakness of the dome Antarctic base, that it would be buried by snowfall. Modern Antarctic bases are on elevated legs that could actually be lifted and repositioned onto the rising surface and even slowly walk the structure away from cleaving ice shelves. The Antarctic dome was a brilliant structure but they failed to identify the risks they had to address.
@@johnwang9914 Good point, though at the time engineering for that environment was barely understood and the need to create a space for the various modules that were under the dome such as living quarters and communications was pretty good and a lot better than what they had while they worked out the details. I know, having lived there for an austral summer and well acquainted with a lot of it virtues and shortcomings. When it was disassembled about 2010 a friend of mine saved an aluminum hub plate which I still treasure. Cheerio.
The inside wasn't too bad either....though I used to wonder if that sphere of snow that accumulated under the central oculus was gonna fall on me every time I'd run out to go between the dining hall and the bar. Austral Summer 1985-86, Comms guy.
@@416dlI've always wondered about the personal journey that passes through the South Pole. How much of the journey was a matter of intention spurred by the desire to go there, versus pursuit of a career that just by chance required a stop over? Either way it's a pretty cool club to be counted as one its members IMO.
@@Cromwellsseveredhead Thanks. I have always been interested in Antarctica ever since reading about it in Nat'l Geographic as a youngster (I'm 72 now) but never thought I would go, but my path there was, I suppose like others: happenstance. In the late 70's with a degree in fine arts I found a job on a fire crew with the forest service where a lot of other misfits or oddballs also worked in what was quintessentially seasonal work and like a lot of other seasonal workers it means you're open to other seasonal opportunities, and as it happens another fellow on the crew had a brother who was a civilian contract worker in McMurdo and of course, since it was summer work in the southern hemisphere it fit in nicely with our summer work in the north (Washington State). This fellow had a xerox copy of an application to the primary contractor which at that time was IT&T out of Paramus New Jersey. I applied, like a few others, and after a couple of years, while others were selected I never heard back, but after a couple of years they tracked me down because I had a skill stack that would fit in with their field management in McMurdo and so I elected to go during late austral Winter (August 83) via New Zealand, for what would likely be 5 or 6 months. The first season was quite the experience and it really was a different world. Others down there would be military as back then the US Military, mostly Navy Seabees, but also air crews and other specialties, and a few Army and Air Force also were working there. All of this in support of the primary mission which was science research ranging from geophysics to microbiology, astrophysics to geology...and lots of other projects, quite a bit of which I got to know a lot about and even help in non-technical ways. I went down a second year and again a remarkable experience but being a civilian working in McMurdo does start to feel a little confining, and so I was offered a position as a radio operator up under the dome at the Pole for my 3rd season, which again was really interesting and about as close to working on another planet, or on a space station as I'm ever likely to experience. Over those 3 seasons I made great friends some of whom are still very close with, and unforgettable experiences which would continue to influence my life and still does in many ways. The current program down on the ice still does hire civilian workers to support the ongoing research down there in McMurdo and the Pole and on the Peninsula which is reached via Ushuia in Chile. A search online will pretty quickly bring you to the current contractor via the National Science Foundation's web site. These days it's a lot easier to get to Antarctica through commercial tourism which was not really available in the 80s when I was there, and I presume they might hire seasonal workers too...and in fact I later worked with some who worked on cruise ships as crew member or lecturers. I was tempted to pursue that for a while but others have more credentials than I do and after the Ice I headed North to Alaska and became a tour guide there for almost 20 years, but that's another story. These days I'm retired and settled down with my sweetheart and our 20 acres of marginal woodland in the absolute middle of nowhere flyover country. How 'bout you? Tally ho.
UC Davis in California still has several, built in the early 70s by students for housing. When I was a student there in the late 80s I knew someone who lived in one with a roommate.
While domes are great for enclosing volume, circular home interiors are awkward. Rectangular floor plans tend to be more efficient. People I know find the exteriors of most dome homes very ugly but large smooth domes attractive. I was fortunate enough to meet Mr Fuller once at a lecture he gave in the 1970s.
The Henry Ford Museum has a Dymaxion House, behind the section with all the old farm equipment; they'll give you a tour of it it you don't mind waiting 15 or so minutes.
BUCKY gave a number of presentations across the US in the 1970s sponsored by est. Bucky’s insight and energy for the future are lessons I have never left behind.
Not a bad idea! I would love to live in a dome house. He was just a little ahead of his time too bad that no one took his concept and ran with it. I have always thought there is so much wasted space in a home not counting the time homes. Think how much time and energy is wasted in a larger home and for what? So we can play keep up with the Joneses. Great video today, thanks.
Like personal robots, monorails and nuclear fusion these domed houses always seem just 10 years away. Personally I love the concept of both the house and the car as well as the Chemosphere house concept by Lautner that again was clearly inspired by Fuller's work but given a 60's makeover...
I loved and still do, the idea of dome homes. I have been to Monolithic Domes in Italy, Texas twice. Spent most of my adult life trying to stay employed, so building my own dome never happened.
I lived in a small dome in the Santa Cruz Mts. for 9 months. It was the most peaceful living experience I've ever had. Returning to the usual suburban environment was truly terrible. The great dome for the US pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal was a life changing experience. On a foot note: when LBJ found out that the exhibits in the pavilion were to be pop art inspired, including Andy Warhol, he threatened to cancel our participation. He wanted it to only feature military hardware. Says alot about his sensibility... The sculptures seen here are by the artist Kenneth Snelson.
This may have been mentioned already but Fuller designed the dome-shaped repair facilities for Union Tank Car Corp. I believe there were three of them and all have been demolished. According to a documentary I saw years ago, the structures and their insides were designed to accommodate tank cars of a specific, standard length. As soon as that standard changed and the cars got longer, the whole facility had to be mothballed as its dimensions could not be increased due to the domes’ inherent design.
They’re thermodynamically ideal compared to orthogonal structures because the heat radiates out from the center and circulates freely without dead spots introduced by corners if designed properly. A central heater/hearth kind of element or split unit heat pump head would be a great way to heat the entire space. The spherical or semi-spherical shape presents less surface area for a given volume than an orthogonal structure, so there’s less relative heat flux between the interior and exterior. You can design them as a double-walled structure as well, creating a thermal break and providing more room for potential insulation. As others have mentioned, properly placed windows would provide a sort of greenhouse effect that could be controlled by louvers, electrochromic glass, etc…
I wish you’d take requests. I found this really beautiful 1920s mansion for sale on Zillow. it’s interesting because if you go into street view and turn around, there’s a twin/mirror look a like mansion across the street.
Geodesic domes are cool, but they're hard to divide into usable spaces, & it's hart to seal their roofs. Probably best to use them for greenhouses, theaters, or stadiums. I'd still like one, but I know it's not for everyone. Fuller was a man of vision, but his vision was too far removed from the everyday for most people to find it useful. Also, he shouldn't have waited for perfection before implementing/marketing his ideas, like the Dymaxion House; perfection never comes. You need a product that's free of major flaws, not perfect.
Agreed this was the main reason why it fell out of favor + depends on what county that will let you build one since it is more likely than not Out of Code.
Checkout the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee….. while a marvel of its time and quite an efficient design, the problem now is how astronomically expensive it going to be to preserve it, especially considering its present location does not make for a viable tourist attraction.
Back in the 90s, I had a work assoc iate who bought a dome house. He wound up not liking it. The problem was that there were so many edges and complicated junctions that it was hard to keep it fully sealed. It leaked and required constant care. Of course this probably wouldn't have mattered for a warehouse or tennis court. He tried to sell it but couldn't find a buyer. Finally a biulder bought it for the land adnd tore it down.
The problem with the domes built around that time seem to arise from people trying to build the domes like a traditional house. They took the geometry on its own without regard for the differences in how you would need to design a proper semi-spherical geodesic structure. You can’t just build it out of triangles made from 2x4s and nails, cover it in tar paper and shingles, and call it a day. It’s a whole different beast. We have to change how we think about the structure as a whole. We have to learn about how the geometry differs from traditional orthogonal designs. Bucky tried to pass that kind of information along, but for the most part, industry didn’t seem to listen. The materials available to us today give us a lot more latitude for designing these structures as well. If we just look at what has been done instead of what can be done with what’s available we won’t get anywhere new.
Fuller seemed obsessed with circular and oval shapes, and this made his home designs impractical. You need bookshelves and other storage in a home, and this is easy to build against flat walls, but quite difficult with curved walls. Plus dividing the interior space with rooms or partitions would be hard, I suspect rooms inside dome homes are just cubicles, even the toilet. My thermonuclear hoarder family never would have survived in a dome home.
I remember when I was an undergrad at the Univ of Michigan in the 1970's and all the guys at were talking about 'Bucky' Fuller. They must have been engineering majors. This English & history major never heard of him before. 😄 It was the first time I'd heard of a geodesic dome.
Except all your windows are now custom made / expensive which sucks when hail storms occur, and it's hard to make good use of inwardly curving walls, now all your buildout and cabinetry is also custom so changing anything becomes nightmarish, and most building codes simply don't accept them. Make sure you talk to someone who has lived a while in one - preferably an owner - and make sure you actually tour one too - before you plan to build one. Domes enclose the most volume for a given amount of material. This makes them volumetrically efficient, but not especially efficient in floor space, and it does not make them easy to live in.
Bucky Balls! I remember my dad talking about them and the micro and macro applications after watching a PBS special or NOVA back in the early 80s I would guess.
Problems with geodesic domes include difficulty with interior organization. Also leaks are common, and openable windows difficult to engineer. They are hard to gutter especially for water saving, no peak ventilation and ultraviolet breakdown of plastic often used to shrink wrap a skin of sorts on it which means you must replace the skin after a time. The plastic skin often used is also fragile and difficult to repair if damaged by a falling branch, Ladders do not work well against domes. No roof overhang makes it hot in the summer, and without gutters the rainwater will collect around the foundation which causes problems. The alternative sort still like them and there are 2 in my neighborhood. Both of them have boxy storage sheds next to them for all the things that don't fit in as they are too small and are difficult to add on to. They are eye catching and seen as innovative. To me they are a solution looking for a problem.
My favorite R. Buckminster Fuller quote goes something like this: I'd rather be not understood than misunderstood. Why? Because if people don't understand you, they will ask for clarification. But if they misunderstand you, they will not. He's one of the people I wished I could have met. Another is Frank Lloyd Wright.
Expo 67 in Montreal had one of these incredible dome called the Biosphere... The exposition was called "Man and His World" the American exhibit was Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere.... Lyndon Johnson signed it over to Canada in 1968 where it was used until 1976 to host numerous events.... In 1995 the city gave it over as a museum for promoting the environment and it's protection
Sorry to say your usual high quality audio was lacking. I enjoyed your presentation and think Fuller’s design are ok, but not anything I would want for my home JIM ❤
As noted in the comments below, geodesic domes at the South Pole were unsuccessful. Snow accumulated rapidly around the perimeter and had to be regularly removed with heavy equipment, which was never easy to start in the bitter weather. Today's buildings are super-insulated with polystyrene foam and built on pilings, so wind-driven snow passes underneath and keeps going.
Those dymaxion homes look familiar. I wonder if some homeowners figured out how to get them airborne for transportation, with jets or nuclear engines, and are moving around the planet with them now.
I can't get over the fact that prized architects houses (like those featured here) so often look interesting but are really BAD to live in with a family.
The geodesic dome and Dymaxion house remain with us as dome homes and yurts. The man was just ahead of his time. Well, that and ignorant of the lives of Mongolian nomads. 😉
Yes their worth a second look, if only for their application to expansion past the confines of earth or their possible use in natonal defense to protect our major cities. Ether of those options would undoubtedly be costly yet worthy ventures though.
This video tapped into a passion of mine, that passion to be able to craft your own place. Personally that is my American dream. I have years of experience working for a private contractor. I wish it was a viable possibility for people nowadays. Especially for the people who have the skills & are willing to build their own little shack. It shouldn't only be available to the wealthy.. Restricting this from everyone except the rich is the most Anti-American thing in my opinion.. Where they have made this so it is only obtainable to those few who can afford to buy land, pay for a bunch of permits, pay for engineers, pay for architects, pay for yearly property taxes, yada yada. It's disgusting ~This might sound weird but one thing they did better during the great depression was allow poor individuals to build themselves a little place to sleep. (I totally understand that It is common for people to treat the great depression as the worst thing that's ever happened) but at least poor people could use their own labor to protect themselves from the weather. Nowadays we do not have those options unless you are a very wealthy person (which rules out 99% of the people who did learn to make things on their own) My point to all this is, People that are stuck in poverty at least NEED some kind of options.. Right now so many aspects of our society are completely blocked off unless you are wealthy.
Is geo-dez-ic the correct pronunciation? 🤔 In the UK, we say geo-dee-zic. Have you covered the Xanadu homes of the future? Besides the one in the Orlando area, until the early 1990s.
❤ Must have been shut out by the bankers realestate and building industry. It was tried again in the sixties. They will leak and condensation. I wound be a great Tic- Tac 😂😂😂
I think Fuller was a bit too idealistic for his time. He should continue to be studied as his ideas are inspiring and incorporate conservationist ideals. Prefab housing is huge right now and might be a solution to affordable housing and homelessness.
Thats probably why people used to think they saw flying saucers. It was actually these round metal houses flying through the air after a big wind storm 😂
I didn't bother to finish the video. None of Fuller's designs' negatives were mentioned. The dome, true, encloses the most space per area of exterior material, but in practice, the triangle pieces have to be cut from rectangle stock. Thus, there is much more waste. Plus, typical construction craftsmen don't have the skills. The 3 wheel car was deadly. Nowadays, it's well known you can't stably steer (above very slow speeds) such a vehicle by the rear wheel.
It’s worth finishing the video. These like anything else are only issues if you just take them as unsolved on face value. We have to do the legwork and look at the issues objectively from a fresh perspective. We have new materials, new understanding of engineering that might not have been practical or widely-understood when these were designed. Bucky himself even said that the materials would need to catch up, and would still need to be developed. We have much better materials and methods available than even the ones built in the 1990s AFTER his death. A little bit of creativity and exploratory insight into the subject shows us that those issues are already solvable or have already been solved by the designer. Rectangular stock can be divided into equilateral triangles along with two right angle triangles from the corners whose angle matches those of the other triangles. You can either match those up to form a full triangle or use them on bottom sections depending on what portion of a sphere the dome takes on. There are lots of uses for those pieces if you’re creative and understand the geometry. You design the size of the triangle around the material available to minimize waste. Construction craftsmen with a reasonable amount of skill would have no problem building these with a little bit of experience. The problem is that we keep building things the same way we always have, so most of them might not have as much experience with triangular and geodesic geometry. Ideally they wouldn’t be using materials cut on site anyway. This kind of design lends itself well to mass producing a few varieties of lightweight, interchangeable, modular components in controlled environments and assembling those components on site for much faster and reproducible quality with minimal skill and material waste needed. The car is a whole different topic that needs to be looked at within context. It was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, much more efficient and better designed than its contemporary peers. The safety concerns of the vehicle were greatly blown out of proportion, and its further development and adoption was cut short due to bad press from an accident involving another vehicle and unsafe driving practices. Cars in general aren’t very safe modes of travel. How many traditional cars have crashed, yet we still use them?
look like real design work, going on here? not just cutting holes in the wall, the build in strange-shaped leaning and stuff, just almost to point out that if they fell over or collapsed completely like map itea, as its flat, you could really make popup books, attlas, with full earth globes that, when not in use, just fold away into just regular books?
A better design would be a net of vertices and edges based on catenary curves, in other words the natural curve created when you hang a rope or chain across two fixed points. Also instead of relying on "perfect" geometry, geodesics, it would be better to start with simulated annealing, optimizing on the lengths of the edges. Sorry, it's a mistake to assume truth in beauty. A true perfect geodesic dome is actually weak on the top.
The only shortage is the shortage of imagination. Interestingly one way that his principle of getting more from less extended to resource extraction as we see that the era of dwindling resources has largely been avoided to the consternation of the neo-malthusians and their fellow doomsayers who in my estimation have done more to lower human enjoyment of life than lack of stuff or overcrowding. Tally ho.
Do you realize there are extremely few truly original ideas? We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and continue to refine and reapply ideas from one domain to another.
You can see how the silver stream camping vehicles got their inspiration. Three problems with his home, it is so lightweight a hurricane would blow it away as easily as a mobile home. Two, who wants to take their home with them every time they move? Not to mention the cost of transporting the house. And thirdly I think they would take up more land space, which today is a major problem. On the plus side no row housing lol
Fun fact my high school buddy leased the Dymaxion home outside Wichita. He hosted a house party and I a got a full tour of the house. Sorry but I thought it was weird and even weirder to expect someone to live in. The only up side I saw was the lot was Awesome with its sizable pond right off the patio. This was about ‘74 or ‘75.
I attended University in Nebraska during the 1970s. Bucky Fuller was often around giving public lectures. I think I attended five brilliant presentations always with people standing and cheering at the end. He gave a strong arrangement against military and war that I only now really appreciate. Thanks alway for your great revisit of the past. I think the Anhisier Bush Green House in St. Louis, if it is still standing is his best domed building.
The Climatron in the Missouri Botanical Gardens is still fully functional in STL. It’s a wonderful space with lots of tropical plants to walk around and view
@2.7petabytes Thanks so much what a great building!
Fun fact, living in a Geodesic Dome growing up, there is little sound privacy inside. Sound travels easily from one side of the house to the other if there aren't any ceilings blocking it.
Best to have a ground Floor or two level dome where some privacy and sound insulation is possible. Heating and cooling present a few more problems with the domed area having so much volume.
Are there rooms inside them? Are they really just cubicles, with walls that don't go to the ceiling? The carpentry skills required to properly divide a geodesic dome into living quarters for multiple people seems... large.
@Build a ground floor first then put the dome on top.
My father was an architect and a huge fan of Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller. Growing up, instead of “Monkey Bars” in our back yard, we had a 12 foot diameter geodesic dome to climb on.
a "climbatron", we had two at our primary school.
@ynot6473 most 70s and 80s kids had at least one
I remember these there was one in my grandma's backyard for us
The bathroom design is one that I wish actually existed now. The sink design in particular-I have fibromyalgia from spinal injuries and that sink was designed for bathing children safely with a straight back and was absolute genius! I also love the seamless bathroom unit for ease of cleaning in general
What killed the geodesic domes for private homes was building codes. Just as with ground sheltered homes, it's a hassle to convince local jurisdictions to let you build one.
Fascinating episode! If only we'd listened. Now, I want to learn more about Fuller. Thank you for another great episode!
I used to frequent a disco whose dance floor was inside a geodesic dome. The triangles were outlined with neon tubes. It was pretty cool!
The Saint in NYC! It was AMAZING! RIP.
Amazing man--met him once at his home on an island here in Maine. Very gracious and welcoming--and brilliant-guy. I've been in a dozen or more large domes over the years. The structures have challenges-they are very labor intensive, though materials economical and build practices and quality can vary widely. Adapting them for human use has huge challenges. Typical building needs for being weatherproof and having natural light (opening windows), access, ventilation (HVAC penetrations), insulation, exterior finishes etc. are very difficult to establish effectively. As are interior walls/flat surfaces commonly used in modern living for partitions, hanging stuff, cabinets, counters, built-ins, closets etc. Open areas are easier yet have alot of unusable space due to the constant curvature of the exterior walls. There's A GOOD REASON that man/womankind has evolved to using flat surfaces.
Yeah, and he didn't hesitate to steal ideas like Tensegrity from his students (Dymaxion concept and name came from two ad-men, not Fuller). He was a philanderer and had many affairs with married women. He cheated on his wife Anne Hewlett many times. So was he smart? Certainly. Was he A Great Man? Nah.
His thinking and designs are relevant for today's housing needs!
His personal dome home is not far from Southern University of Illinois in Carbondale, IL. It is available for tours.
I’ve built two domes, one a home in north Idaho. I know the larger one has been up over 20 years doing great. The frame went up on one day. The sheeting another 3. We took a week or more on the roofing. Two guys who had never built a house built it in a month part time.
I was at the South Pole when the dome was still in use. That’s a nice pic of the station.
The picture also showed the main weakness of the dome Antarctic base, that it would be buried by snowfall. Modern Antarctic bases are on elevated legs that could actually be lifted and repositioned onto the rising surface and even slowly walk the structure away from cleaving ice shelves. The Antarctic dome was a brilliant structure but they failed to identify the risks they had to address.
@@johnwang9914 Good point, though at the time engineering for that environment was barely understood and the need to create a space for the various modules that were under the dome such as living quarters and communications was pretty good and a lot better than what they had while they worked out the details. I know, having lived there for an austral summer and well acquainted with a lot of it virtues and shortcomings. When it was disassembled about 2010 a friend of mine saved an aluminum hub plate which I still treasure. Cheerio.
The inside wasn't too bad either....though I used to wonder if that sphere of snow that accumulated under the central oculus was gonna fall on me every time I'd run out to go between the dining hall and the bar. Austral Summer 1985-86, Comms guy.
@@416dlI've always wondered about the personal journey that passes through the South Pole.
How much of the journey was a matter of intention spurred by the desire to go there, versus pursuit of a career that just by chance required a stop over?
Either way it's a pretty cool club to be counted as one its members IMO.
@@Cromwellsseveredhead Thanks. I have always been interested in Antarctica ever since reading about it in Nat'l Geographic as a youngster (I'm 72 now) but never thought I would go, but my path there was, I suppose like others: happenstance. In the late 70's with a degree in fine arts I found a job on a fire crew with the forest service where a lot of other misfits or oddballs also worked in what was quintessentially seasonal work and like a lot of other seasonal workers it means you're open to other seasonal opportunities, and as it happens another fellow on the crew had a brother who was a civilian contract worker in McMurdo and of course, since it was summer work in the southern hemisphere it fit in nicely with our summer work in the north (Washington State). This fellow had a xerox copy of an application to the primary contractor which at that time was IT&T out of Paramus New Jersey. I applied, like a few others, and after a couple of years, while others were selected I never heard back, but after a couple of years they tracked me down because I had a skill stack that would fit in with their field management in McMurdo and so I elected to go during late austral Winter (August 83) via New Zealand, for what would likely be 5 or 6 months. The first season was quite the experience and it really was a different world. Others down there would be military as back then the US Military, mostly Navy Seabees, but also air crews and other specialties, and a few Army and Air Force also were working there. All of this in support of the primary mission which was science research ranging from geophysics to microbiology, astrophysics to geology...and lots of other projects, quite a bit of which I got to know a lot about and even help in non-technical ways. I went down a second year and again a remarkable experience but being a civilian working in McMurdo does start to feel a little confining, and so I was offered a position as a radio operator up under the dome at the Pole for my 3rd season, which again was really interesting and about as close to working on another planet, or on a space station as I'm ever likely to experience.
Over those 3 seasons I made great friends some of whom are still very close with, and unforgettable experiences which would continue to influence my life and still does in many ways. The current program down on the ice still does hire civilian workers to support the ongoing research down there in McMurdo and the Pole and on the Peninsula which is reached via Ushuia in Chile. A search online will pretty quickly bring you to the current contractor via the National Science Foundation's web site. These days it's a lot easier to get to Antarctica through commercial tourism which was not really available in the 80s when I was there, and I presume they might hire seasonal workers too...and in fact I later worked with some who worked on cruise ships as crew member or lecturers. I was tempted to pursue that for a while but others have more credentials than I do and after the Ice I headed North to Alaska and became a tour guide there for almost 20 years, but that's another story. These days I'm retired and settled down with my sweetheart and our 20 acres of marginal woodland in the absolute middle of nowhere flyover country. How 'bout you? Tally ho.
My first encounter was in reading about Bucky's dome home in the Whole Earth Catalog 1968-1972
That's pretty awesome :) a lot of crazy history around whole earth catalog and Fuller
I miss my dome house in redding California
you explained all his main ideas so well!
Cool episode. My hippy friends built a few Geodesic Domes here in Vermont in the late 60's and early 70's
UC Davis in California still has several, built in the early 70s by students for housing. When I was a student there in the late 80s I knew someone who lived in one with a roommate.
While domes are great for enclosing volume, circular home interiors are awkward. Rectangular floor plans tend to be more efficient. People I know find the exteriors of most dome homes very ugly but large smooth domes attractive. I was fortunate enough to meet Mr Fuller once at a lecture he gave in the 1970s.
The Henry Ford Museum has a Dymaxion House, behind the section with all the old farm equipment; they'll give you a tour of it it you don't mind waiting 15 or so minutes.
It's like a modern Yurt
HAVE BEEN THERE MULTIPLE TIMES AND HAVE SEEN THE HOUSE. ITS AMAZING.
I've toured it, and it is quite cool. It is an appealing concept
Yeah! I saw that when I went. It was so cool
BUCKY gave a number of presentations across the US in the 1970s sponsored by est. Bucky’s insight and energy for the future are lessons I have never left behind.
Not a bad idea! I would love to live in a dome house. He was just a little ahead of his time too bad that no one took his concept and ran with it. I have always thought there is so much wasted space in a home not counting the time homes. Think how much time and energy is wasted in a larger home and for what? So we can play keep up with the Joneses. Great video today, thanks.
An absolutely fascinating vlog. Excellent research done to provide information to us. Wow, very informative,interesting and inspiring. Thank you.
Really interesting topic. Thanks Ken.
Like personal robots, monorails and nuclear fusion these domed houses always seem just 10 years away. Personally I love the concept of both the house and the car as well as the Chemosphere house concept by Lautner that again was clearly inspired by Fuller's work but given a 60's makeover...
I loved and still do, the idea of dome homes. I have been to Monolithic Domes in Italy, Texas twice. Spent most of my adult life trying to stay employed, so building my own dome never happened.
I lived in a small dome in the Santa Cruz Mts. for 9 months. It was the most peaceful living experience I've ever had. Returning to the usual suburban environment was truly terrible.
The great dome for the US pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal was a life changing experience. On a foot note: when LBJ found out that the exhibits in the pavilion were to be pop art inspired, including Andy Warhol, he threatened to cancel our participation. He wanted it to only feature military hardware. Says alot about his sensibility...
The sculptures seen here are by the artist Kenneth Snelson.
It kinda reminds me of Yurt liveing . just more refined.
This may have been mentioned already but Fuller designed the dome-shaped repair facilities for Union Tank Car Corp. I believe there were three of them and all have been demolished. According to a documentary I saw years ago, the structures and their insides were designed to accommodate tank cars of a specific, standard length. As soon as that standard changed and the cars got longer, the whole facility had to be mothballed as its dimensions could not be increased due to the domes’ inherent design.
A dome house is for sale in Montauk point Long Island right now.
be eth ever so humble
there's no place like Dome
How do you keep out cold?!
Greenhouse effect. Sun comes in and heats. You would need heaters for winter
They’re thermodynamically ideal compared to orthogonal structures because the heat radiates out from the center and circulates freely without dead spots introduced by corners if designed properly.
A central heater/hearth kind of element or split unit heat pump head would be a great way to heat the entire space.
The spherical or semi-spherical shape presents less surface area for a given volume than an orthogonal structure, so there’s less relative heat flux between the interior and exterior.
You can design them as a double-walled structure as well, creating a thermal break and providing more room for potential insulation.
As others have mentioned, properly placed windows would provide a sort of greenhouse effect that could be controlled by louvers, electrochromic glass, etc…
I wish you’d take requests. I found this really beautiful 1920s mansion for sale on Zillow. it’s interesting because if you go into street view and turn around, there’s a twin/mirror look a like mansion across the street.
Geodesic domes are cool, but they're hard to divide into usable spaces, & it's hart to seal their roofs. Probably best to use them for greenhouses, theaters, or stadiums. I'd still like one, but I know it's not for everyone.
Fuller was a man of vision, but his vision was too far removed from the everyday for most people to find it useful. Also, he shouldn't have waited for perfection before implementing/marketing his ideas, like the Dymaxion House; perfection never comes. You need a product that's free of major flaws, not perfect.
Agreed this was the main reason why it fell out of favor + depends on what county that will let you build one since it is more likely than not Out of Code.
Checkout the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee….. while a marvel of its time and quite an efficient design, the problem now is how astronomically expensive it going to be to preserve it, especially considering its present location does not make for a viable tourist attraction.
@@MrSheckstr Just did. Even today, they look like a vision of the future.
Back in the 90s, I had a work assoc iate who bought a dome house. He wound up not liking it. The problem was that there were so many edges and complicated junctions that it was hard to keep it fully sealed. It leaked and required constant care. Of course this probably wouldn't have mattered for a warehouse or tennis court. He tried to sell it but couldn't find a buyer. Finally a biulder bought it for the land adnd tore it down.
The problem with the domes built around that time seem to arise from people trying to build the domes like a traditional house.
They took the geometry on its own without regard for the differences in how you would need to design a proper semi-spherical geodesic structure.
You can’t just build it out of triangles made from 2x4s and nails, cover it in tar paper and shingles, and call it a day. It’s a whole different beast.
We have to change how we think about the structure as a whole.
We have to learn about how the geometry differs from traditional orthogonal designs. Bucky tried to pass that kind of information along, but for the most part, industry didn’t seem to listen.
The materials available to us today give us a lot more latitude for designing these structures as well.
If we just look at what has been done instead of what can be done with what’s available we won’t get anywhere new.
Fuller seemed obsessed with circular and oval shapes, and this made his home designs impractical. You need bookshelves and other storage in a home, and this is easy to build against flat walls, but quite difficult with curved walls. Plus dividing the interior space with rooms or partitions would be hard, I suspect rooms inside dome homes are just cubicles, even the toilet. My thermonuclear hoarder family never would have survived in a dome home.
I remember when I was an undergrad at the Univ of Michigan in the 1970's and all the guys at were talking about 'Bucky' Fuller. They must have been engineering majors. This English & history major never heard of him before. 😄 It was the first time I'd heard of a geodesic dome.
Except all your windows are now custom made / expensive which sucks when hail storms occur, and it's hard to make good use of inwardly curving walls, now all your buildout and cabinetry is also custom so changing anything becomes nightmarish, and most building codes simply don't accept them. Make sure you talk to someone who has lived a while in one - preferably an owner - and make sure you actually tour one too - before you plan to build one.
Domes enclose the most volume for a given amount of material. This makes them volumetrically efficient, but not especially efficient in floor space, and it does not make them easy to live in.
Bucky Balls! I remember my dad talking about them and the micro and macro applications after watching a PBS special or NOVA back in the early 80s I would guess.
Thank you so much for exploring this interesting topic!
He was a engineering genius .
Nothing wrong about looking into the past to see the future. Fuller was a very smart man. And he saw the future
These things are needed in California. Make them fire resistant. Dymaxian sounds like an Autobot name.
Buckminsterfullerene is a fun name for a molecule
Problems with geodesic domes include difficulty with interior organization. Also leaks are common, and openable windows difficult to engineer. They are hard to gutter especially for water saving, no peak ventilation and ultraviolet breakdown of plastic often used to shrink wrap a skin of sorts on it which means you must replace the skin after a time. The plastic skin often used is also fragile and difficult to repair if damaged by a falling branch, Ladders do not work well against domes. No roof overhang makes it hot in the summer, and without gutters the rainwater will collect around the foundation which causes problems.
The alternative sort still like them and there are 2 in my neighborhood. Both of them have boxy storage sheds next to them for all the things that don't fit in as they are too small and are difficult to add on to. They are eye catching and seen as innovative. To me they are a solution looking for a problem.
My favorite R. Buckminster Fuller quote goes something like this: I'd rather be not understood than misunderstood. Why? Because if people don't understand you, they will ask for clarification. But if they misunderstand you, they will not. He's one of the people I wished I could have met. Another is Frank Lloyd Wright.
I think St. Louis has aclimatron as a part of the Botanical Gardens. Its beautiful!
Yep! The Climatron is a huge terrarium, you might say. I've been there a few times and it is always neat to see.
Expo 67 in Montreal had one of these incredible dome called the Biosphere... The exposition was called "Man and His World" the American exhibit was Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere.... Lyndon Johnson signed it over to Canada in 1968 where it was used until 1976 to host numerous events.... In 1995 the city gave it over as a museum for promoting the environment and it's protection
7:24 While buckminster Popularize tensegirty for architectural purposes, those sculptures were made by Kenneth Snelson.
I believe the Original Dymaxion House is on display at the "Henry Ford" Museum in Dearborn, Mi.
Sorry to say your usual high quality audio was lacking.
I enjoyed your presentation and think Fuller’s design are ok, but not anything I would want for my home
JIM ❤
As noted in the comments below, geodesic domes at the South Pole were unsuccessful. Snow accumulated rapidly around the perimeter and had to be regularly removed with heavy equipment, which was never easy to start in the bitter weather. Today's buildings are super-insulated with polystyrene foam and built on pilings, so wind-driven snow passes underneath and keeps going.
I have been in two. They are very interesting
Ahhh. Our Spaceship Earth.
Those dymaxion homes look familiar. I wonder if some homeowners figured out how to get them airborne for transportation, with jets or nuclear engines, and are moving around the planet with them now.
Dome homes are one of those ideas from the 1960’s that didn’t catch on.
Loved how he
Saw us on the map as all one
I can't get over the fact that prized architects houses (like those featured here) so often look interesting but are really BAD to live in with a family.
8:53 It is hard to tell whether these people are putting something together or looking at something after it collapsed.
Ironically dome houses are some of the only ones that should be built. Especially if you live where there are a lot of wild fires or hurricanes.
💛💛💛
The car looks like he inspired the air stream we know today
Great review of Fuller and his life. Not much use regarding the Housing Crisis.
I lived in a hippy geodesic dome house in Durango Colorado for like 10 years. it was fun! pretty sure it is still there but falling apart!
Great... until it rains.
Great segment.
No thanks for the dome house, Ken. In all fairness I would consider an old ICBM silo.
I appreciate your variety in reporting on houses.
The geodesic dome and Dymaxion house remain with us as dome homes and yurts. The man was just ahead of his time.
Well, that and ignorant of the lives of Mongolian nomads. 😉
🚮 And yet we ended up
with McMansions
with multiple nonsensical roofs
that require regular replacement.
People say Buckminster was Fuller of shit.
If you lived in a dome home, I can guarantee you were weird and drove an old volvo.
Yes their worth a second look, if only for their application to expansion past the confines of earth or their possible use in natonal defense to protect our major cities. Ether of those options would undoubtedly be costly yet worthy ventures though.
Not a fan. The idea of taking one's house along when moving seems impractical. And geodesic dome houses feel uncomfortable to me.
Burningman is the largest dome city in our realm for a week or so...
There’s one in my neighborhood in Edmonton, Canada and I’ve always wanted to see inside it. Built in the mid 70’s too.
The accident involved a federal politician. The cops towed the senator's car away, leaving the impression that it wasn't safe.
And more!
🤮 maybe I could use one and disguise it as a Victorian Observatory
"shiping tube"....
This video tapped into a passion of mine, that passion to be able to craft your own place. Personally that is my American dream. I have years of experience working for a private contractor. I wish it was a viable possibility for people nowadays. Especially for the people who have the skills & are willing to build their own little shack. It shouldn't only be available to the wealthy.. Restricting this from everyone except the rich is the most Anti-American thing in my opinion.. Where they have made this so it is only obtainable to those few who can afford to buy land, pay for a bunch of permits, pay for engineers, pay for architects, pay for yearly property taxes, yada yada. It's disgusting
~This might sound weird but one thing they did better during the great depression was allow poor individuals to build themselves a little place to sleep. (I totally understand that It is common for people to treat the great depression as the worst thing that's ever happened) but at least poor people could use their own labor to protect themselves from the weather. Nowadays we do not have those options unless you are a very wealthy person (which rules out 99% of the people who did learn to make things on their own) My point to all this is, People that are stuck in poverty at least NEED some kind of options.. Right now so many aspects of our society are completely blocked off unless you are wealthy.
how about a little love for Kenneth Snelson?
Is geo-dez-ic the correct pronunciation? 🤔 In the UK, we say geo-dee-zic.
Have you covered the Xanadu homes of the future? Besides the one in the Orlando area, until the early 1990s.
He pronounced it how I've always heard it said here in America.
❤ Must have been shut out by the bankers realestate and building industry. It was tried again in the sixties. They will leak and condensation. I wound be a great Tic- Tac 😂😂😂
Wait, that house is a yert. Mongolia invented it in ancient days. He had to know that.
The moon unit
"Aerodynamic SUVs", say that again, but slowly. Got serious "there's flatearthers all around the globe" vibes to it
I think Fuller was a bit too idealistic for his time. He should continue to be studied as his ideas are inspiring and incorporate conservationist ideals. Prefab housing is huge right now and might be a solution to affordable housing and homelessness.
Thats probably why people used to think they saw flying saucers. It was actually these round metal houses flying through the air after a big wind storm 😂
NU WAVE 👋
I didn't bother to finish the video. None of Fuller's designs' negatives were mentioned. The dome, true, encloses the most space per area of exterior material, but in practice, the triangle pieces have to be cut from rectangle stock. Thus, there is much more waste. Plus, typical construction craftsmen don't have the skills.
The 3 wheel car was deadly. Nowadays, it's well known you can't stably steer (above very slow speeds) such a vehicle by the rear wheel.
It’s worth finishing the video.
These like anything else are only issues if you just take them as unsolved on face value. We have to do the legwork and look at the issues objectively from a fresh perspective.
We have new materials, new understanding of engineering that might not have been practical or widely-understood when these were designed.
Bucky himself even said that the materials would need to catch up, and would still need to be developed. We have much better materials and methods available than even the ones built in the 1990s AFTER his death.
A little bit of creativity and exploratory insight into the subject shows us that those issues are already solvable or have already been solved by the designer.
Rectangular stock can be divided into equilateral triangles along with two right angle triangles from the corners whose angle matches those of the other triangles. You can either match those up to form a full triangle or use them on bottom sections depending on what portion of a sphere the dome takes on.
There are lots of uses for those pieces if you’re creative and understand the geometry.
You design the size of the triangle around the material available to minimize waste.
Construction craftsmen with a reasonable amount of skill would have no problem building these with a little bit of experience. The problem is that we keep building things the same way we always have, so most of them might not have as much experience with triangular and geodesic geometry.
Ideally they wouldn’t be using materials cut on site anyway. This kind of design lends itself well to mass producing a few varieties of lightweight, interchangeable, modular components in controlled environments and assembling those components on site for much faster and reproducible quality with minimal skill and material waste needed.
The car is a whole different topic that needs to be looked at within context.
It was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, much more efficient and better designed than its contemporary peers.
The safety concerns of the vehicle were greatly blown out of proportion, and its further development and adoption was cut short due to bad press from an accident involving another vehicle and unsafe driving practices.
Cars in general aren’t very safe modes of travel. How many traditional cars have crashed, yet we still use them?
Good ole Bucky balls!
look like real design work, going on here? not just cutting holes in the wall, the build in strange-shaped leaning and stuff, just almost to point out that if they fell over or collapsed completely like map itea, as its flat, you could really make popup books, attlas, with full earth globes that, when not in use, just fold away into just regular books?
Jacques Fresco's homes were WAY more innovative.
A better design would be a net of vertices and edges based on catenary curves, in other words the natural curve created when you hang a rope or chain across two fixed points. Also instead of relying on "perfect" geometry, geodesics, it would be better to start with simulated annealing, optimizing on the lengths of the edges. Sorry, it's a mistake to assume truth in beauty. A true perfect geodesic dome is actually weak on the top.
Domes are absolutely superior ❤ My father was with Csthedralite in the early 1980’s and sold many throughout the USA.
🤔😕
The only shortage is the shortage of imagination. Interestingly one way that his principle of getting more from less extended to resource extraction as we see that the era of dwindling resources has largely been avoided to the consternation of the neo-malthusians and their fellow doomsayers who in my estimation have done more to lower human enjoyment of life than lack of stuff or overcrowding. Tally ho.
One of his accomplishments was plagiarizing some of his students ideas
Bucky wasn’t an architect. He stole the idea of tensegrity .
Do you realize there are extremely few truly original ideas? We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and continue to refine and reapply ideas from one domain to another.
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
You can see how the silver stream camping vehicles got their inspiration. Three problems with his home, it is so lightweight a hurricane would blow it away as easily as a mobile home. Two, who wants to take their home with them every time they move? Not to mention the cost of transporting the house. And thirdly I think they would take up more land space, which today is a major problem. On the plus side no row housing lol
👽🛸👽🛸👽🛸👽🛸👽🛸👽🛸👽🛸👽🛸
Fun fact my high school buddy leased the Dymaxion home outside Wichita. He hosted a house party and I a got a full tour of the house. Sorry but I thought it was weird and even weirder to expect someone to live in. The only up side I saw was the lot was Awesome with its sizable pond right off the patio. This was about ‘74 or ‘75.