Literary Dose #36
[Geodesic dome over Midtown Manhattan | image source]
"I find Bucky [Fuller] more and more inspirational, especially for the freedom of his research. Two projects done with Shoji Sadao in 1960 make the point. The first of these is the much-ridiculed dome over Midtown Manhattan, criticized either as “impractical” (how to buff the glass, how to get the traffic through) or as simply a megalomaniacal expression of an environment overly controlled [as I did]. Such criticisms miss the project’s simple point: The membrane has a surface area approximately 1/64 that of the aggregated exteriors of all the buildings within it, and Bucky argued that the larger the dome, the greater the energy conserved. The Manhattan dome is simply rhetorical, a device to describe the environmental inefficiencies of standard practice."- Michael Sorkin, from "Bucky lives! Why Fuller matters more today than ever before" in Architectural Record, November 2008, p.
This reminds me of the Superstudio and Archizooom Associati. Inventing "superachitecture" ... fascinating!! If you take a look do not miss the "No-Stop-City" by Archizoom and if ever you have the chance to come across the "12 ideal cities" by Superstudio, DONT MISS IT!
ReplyDeletecan't blame the critics. He wanted it as a solution to postWWII housing problems. It's prolly more relevant now than in situ. anyway... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0sO93nu-Wk&feature=related << go watch Eisenman's take on Fuller's Geodesic Dome. quite amusing, and take it with a pinch of salt!
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