A guided architectural tour spanning the most important region in the world for domes related to the transformative legacy of Buckminster Fuller
On August 19th a guided architectural tour will span the most important region in the world for buildings related to the legacy of Buckminster Fuller. The area extending from St. Louis, Missouri to Carbondale, Illinois contains more architecture by famed inventor Buckminster Fuller than anywhere else in the world. The Buckminster Fuller Dome on the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville campus is hosting a tour of this areas significant collection of geodesic domes. All of these domes from the Climatron in St Louis to Bucky’s own dome home in Carbondale have a direct connection to Fuller who patented the geodesic dome as a revolutionary architectural form in 1954.
The tour will start in St Louis at the Missouri Botanical Gardens geodesic greenhouse, known as the Climatron dome, at 9:00 am on Saturday, August 19th. The tour will proceed to the Mary Brown Center dome in East St Louis designed in 1968 by the company that Fuller founded, Synergetics Inc. The next stop will be at the 384-foot-wide by 120-foot-tall dome in Wood River built in 1961 for the Union Tank Car Company by Synergetics Inc. The lunch hour will be spent in the miniature-earth Fuller Dome (originally named the Religious Center) that Buckminster Fuller designed with his architectural partner Shoji Sadao for the SIUE campus in 1971. The last stop on the tour is at Buckminster Fuller’s actual home, a geodesic dome in Carbondale Illinois that he and his wife Anne lived in from 1960 to 1972. The tour will return back to the Climatron in St Louis at approximately 7:00 pm. Lowder says that “a special guest guide will be joining us on the bus for this tour, playwright, actor and Bucky scholar, D. W. Jacobs, who wrote and performs a one man play based on Fuller’s life will provide perspective and anecdotes as we explore Little Egypt in search of Bucky’s legacy.” Lunch and transportation are provided. Tickets are $100 a piece and limited to 40 registrations, proceeds will go to help renovate the Fuller Dome at SIUE.
