Dome sweet dome: Museum honoring design scientist Fuller

The work of Buckminster Fuller, visionary as it was, doesn't just belong in a museum, and Ron Gaskins has the proof in his Arlington Heights back yard.

Gaskins has a garage based on Fuller's geodesic dome, built by himself from a kit provided by downstate Econ-O-Dome.

"I love it. It's absolutely phenomenal," Gaskins said of the building he put up about five years ago. "It's not your garden-variety structure in my back yard, and I like that. And I'm not wild and crazy, but I don't like the idea of cookie-cutter architecture in the neighborhood. So we don't have cookie-cutter architecture - on our property, anyway."

Fuller, who died about 25 years ago, described himself as a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," but today he is known above all as a thinker and a developer who didn't limit himself to one discipline, as well as one of the fathers of environmentalism and green technology. The exhibit "Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe," running through June 21 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, looks at the entire scope of his work, much of which was conducted in Chicago and at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

While it's true that Fuller's Dymaxion house - originally unveiled at Marshall Field's in 1929 - and three-wheel Dymaxion car proved impractical, they nevertheless were highly influential in their prefab construction and aerodynamic design. Fuller's concepts of efficiency and the use of sustainable resources - "Spaceship Earth" - were embraced by the nascent environmental movement in the '60s, when he also came to the fore (and made the cover of Time magazine) with his geodesic dome, most famously at the U.S. Pavilion at the Expo '67 Montreal World's Fair.

It's that dome that is Fuller's signature design and perhaps his most practical innovation. It's energy-efficient, in its proportion of volume to surface area, and incredibly strong and stable.

"Because it's a dome," Gaskins said, "the wind has no place to get a hold of it. It has no handles. Imagine a greased pig. Well, this thing behaves like a greased pig in the wind."

The shape lends itself to ready runoff in the rain and stands up under snow - in fact, under any weight placed upon it. "When the engineer from the village came out to look at it, he said, 'You know, I'm having trouble figuring this out. What's the snow load on it?'" Gaskins recalled. "And I said, 'Can you spell 'infinite?'

"A pound of anything placed anywhere on it is divided by 360 and distributed over the whole skin of this beast and transferred to the ground," Gaskins added. "Of course, the engineer of the village is supposed to protect the neighborhood against some idiot building something that's built to collapse and be an eyesore, so you can understand his consternation. But basically the dome itself, the sphere itself, is the strongest structure known to man."

Gaskins heard some complaints from neighbors who really didn't want him building anything in his back yard, but it met all codes and got the OK from the village. "We have a garage attached to the house. This is a second garage in the backside of our property," he said. "I use it as a workshop and a place to store my motorcycles and barbecue grill and, well, junk." It was assembled entirely by hand by himself and a friend he hired to help. Even then they worked mostly in shifts, only occasionally having to do something together. "Mostly, it was assembled by one person," Gaskins said.

Gaskins' garage isn't heated, although it could be, and in fact Econ-O-Domes, sold through Faze Change Produx in downstate Sullivan, sells kits for a 30-foot-diameter home for a completed cost of $40,000 and a 38.5-foot-diameter home for $100,000, including a two-car garage ($70,000 without). As for his garage, Gaskins said only, "It probably cost a whole lot more than it should have, for no small reason of the neighbors harassing us," but that it was "certainly" worth the added cost over a conventional garage or shed.

"I'm selling them all over the country," said Faze Change Produx owner Wil Fidroeff, who worked for years under "Bucky" and after his death was basically awarded the opportunity to work on his patents by his daughter, Allegra. (Fidroeff now lives in a 48-foot-diameter geodesic house in Sullivan outside Decatur, explaining, "I married a farmer's daughter.")

"He didn't invent the geodesic dome. What he did was advance the technology and popularize it," Fidroeff said. A geodesic dome was constructed in Germany in the '20s, and Fidroeff said there's a basic one in China 2,000 years old. Yet beginning after World War II with the building of a geodesic dome at Chicago's Institute of Design - now the Illinois Institute of Technology - Fuller took it, patented it and tied it into his world view of efficient design and construction.

"So I took his idea," Fidroeff said, "and refined that. What I did was figure out how to waterproof it and actually figure out how to put conventional doors and windows in it. ... There are people out there, such as me, who have not stopped trying to advance the technology."

As it is, the dome has proved to be a pretty serviceable idea, as at RPS Engineering in Elgin. "We use geodesic domes to cover tanks used at waste-water-treatment plants," said RPS founder Rich Stanis. "Probably the biggest use of geodesic domes in the United States is in covers for petroleum tanks." He said anyone can see the raised dome "lids" on tanks for jet fuel and petroleum when driving around O'Hare International Airport.

"In this neck of the woods," he said, "when we have snow load, it's a much more efficient way to cover a tank than with a flat cover."

So visit the MCA downtown to see Fuller the visionary, who turned an existential crisis contemplating suicide on the shores of Lake Michigan into "an experiment, to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity," and made good on it. Yet for Fuller the practical design innovator it's only necessary to drive around and look to find his geodesic domes - just off the highway if not in your own back yard.

Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe

When: Through Sunday, June 21

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago

Tickets: $12 adults, $7 seniors and students (Tuesdays free. Special Dymaxion Family Day, free for all families with children 12 and under, Sunday March 15)

Times: Tuesday 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.

Info: (312) 280-2660 or mcachicago.org

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