buckminster fuller
posted in art and design
union tank car dome
from buckminster fuller posted in art and design by nevereatshreddedwheat
This site in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the location of another early geodesic dome designed and constructed by Buckminster Fuller. The dome was used to cover a unique turntable-like system that the Union Tank Car Company had developed to service multiple railway cars. When it was completed in 1958, it was the world's largest clear-span (meaning no columns) structure until a larger geodesic dome was built to house Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose in Long Beach, California in 1982.
When railway cars increased in length from 50 feet to 60 feet in the 1960s, the cars would no longer fit, and the dome became obsolete. The rail yard, including the dome, was sold to Kansas City Southern Railway in 1990 and the dome remained vacant. In 2007, one year before the dome would be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, Kansas City Southern had the building demolished.
Watch a documentary about the Union Tank Car Dome.
one of buckminster fuller’s first geodesic domes
from buckminster fuller posted in art and design by nevereatshreddedwheat
In 1953, Buckminster Fuller was commissioned by the architect of the Nautilus Motor Inn in Woods Hole to design a building for the Inn's restaurant. The geodesic dome that Fuller constructed with the help of his students in 1954 is his oldest surviving geodesic dome and one of the first built for commercial use.
The Dome Restaurant closed in 2002, and as of 2008, there were plans for Fuller's grandnephew to oversee the restoration of the building.