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R. Buckminster Fuller, the Expo ’67 Pavilion and the Atoms for Peace Program 487

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R. Buckminster Fuller, the Expo ’67 Pavilion and the Atoms for Peace Program 487 historical perspective pioneers and pathbreakers R. Buckminster Fuller, the Expo ’67 Pavilion and the Atoms for Peace Program R ebecca D A lv esc o Since the end of World War II, the U.S. government has embraced Moscow Exhibition, the Cold War had reached its peak with the rhetoric of the peaceful use of the atom. Following the government’s the famous Nixon and Khrushchev kitchen debate about the lead, architect-designer-philosopher Richard Buckminster Fuller espoused merits of each nation’s consumer goods. Fuller created geo- similar ideas. Like U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and other “atoms for ABSTRACT peace” enthusiasts, Fuller thought that the revolution then occurring in desic domes for both of these pavilions. architecture was an outgrowth of the peaceful atom. And, like Johnson, Another reason may have been Fuller’s rhetoric of the Fuller believed that technology based on the atom did not just favor peaceful atom that he used to promote his geodesic domes Americans but could be applied for the benefit of all humanity. Fuller in the United States as well as in the Soviet Union during thought atomic technology could help extend humankind’s knowledge the Cold War. The geodesic dome Fuller designed for the base and thus be applied to develop better architecture. This article U.S. Pavilion fit the USIA’s agenda for an “American identity” explains how Fuller, like politicians of the time, believed that the because it stressed the importance of architectural technol- potential for fearful products of destruction—of war and its weaponry— could be applied for peacetime applications, particularly when ogy in the United States and the nation’s superiority in this designing his geodesic dome, including his Expo ’67 pavilion. area over any other. Early Design: World Game U.S. PAvilion at ExPo ’67 During Fuller’s initial interview with the USIA, his first idea for the pavilion was for a 600-foot-long enlargement of his In the fall of 1964, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Shoji Sadao Dymaxion World Map, which was to be placed on the ground and the company Geometrics were hired by the United States of the exhibition space (Fig. 1). The World Map would be Information Agency (USIA) to develop an exterior structure mechanized and provide various data: population growth, for the U.S. Pavilion at Expo ’67 [1], otherwise known as the population movements, natural resources, airplanes in the Universal and International Exhibition Montreal Expo ’67. air at all locations and other statistics. All of these data would Montreal was chosen as the site after the Soviet Union de- clined due to lack of funding. The fair’s gates opened on 28 April 1967 and closed 29 October 1967. It was the time of the Cold War and the Vietnam War. In keeping with the Expo’s theme, “Man and His World,” the USIA wanted to show a humane side of the United States—not a war-faring nation but a humanitarian nation. There are a few reasons why Fuller may have been com- missioned by the USIA to design the U.S. Pavilion for Expo ’67. Fuller worked for the USIA before the Expo commission. Jack Masey, who worked at USIA and hired Fuller for Expo ’67, had also worked with Fuller at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 and at the International Trade Fair in 1956 in Kabul, Afghanistan. At the time of the 1959 Rebecca Dalvesco (design-architectural historian), Mesa, AZ, U.S.A. Fig. 1. Fuller’s first proposal to the USIA showing his Dymaxion Map and Email: <[email protected]>. the exterior of the pavilion. (Courtesy, The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/50/5> for supplemental files associated Source: The United States National Archives at College Park, College Park, with this issue. MD. Photo: Rebecca Dalvesco.) 486 LEONARDO, Vol. 50, No. 5, pp. 486–492, 2017 doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01157 ©2017 ISAST Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01157 by guest on 01 October 2021 was hired for the interior exhibit design, there were many problems with Fuller’s tetrahedronal truss exhibition structure. The tetrahedronal truss was only a roof structure, so there were worries about pioneers and pathbreakers drainage and shelter from Montreal’s win- ter climate. These technical issues would require the tetrahedronal truss to be en- closed with walls. Such an enclosure would create a heavier mass than Fuller’s first proposal and ruin his concept of a light- weight tensegrity structure. Fuller also did not have any agenda for how people would use the generated form. He was more in- Fig. 2. Fuller’s tetrahedronal truss for the U.S. Pavilion that was part of his Total Exhibit Package. terested in form for form’s sake and the (Courtesy, The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller. Source: the United States National Archives at College system for the system’s sake [4]. Park, College Park, MD. Photo: Rebecca Dalvesco.) Final Design: Skybreak Bubble Peter Chermayeff proposed to Fuller the concept of a large geodesic dome for the exhibition structure. He met with Fuller, along with Jack Masey and Ivan Cher- mayeff, a few weeks later in Washington, D.C., to discuss this idea further. Peter brought a book of Fuller’s work to the meeting containing a photograph of Ful- ler’s theoretical 1951 Cotton Mill project. He pointed out the project—a transparent, three-quarter spherical structure that had a number of floors—to Fuller and con- vinced him to use it as the impetus for the U.S. Pavilion [5]. Geodesic domes are large, clear-span structures that involve geodesic tensegrity, which was Fuller’s name for his discontin- uous-compression, continuous-tension Fig. 3. Fuller’s final design, a ¾ geodesic dome for Expo ’67, shows a monorail passing structures [6]. Fuller patented his concept through the pavilion. (© Cambridge Seven Associates. Photo: Peter Chermayeff.) of the geodesic dome in 1954. The U.S. Pa- vilion was Fuller’s largest geodesic dome, measuring 250 feet in diameter and 187 feet in height and composed of steel struts and help to emphasize “the unity and interaction of people” [2]. acrylic lenses (Fig. 3). This was the first time Fuller would According to Fuller, this exhibit would have been called How be able to realize a geodesic dome of such a large volume. It Do I Make the World Work? which later became known as would become known as the Skybreak Bubble. World Game. In Fuller’s game, a computer would answer The U.S. Pavilion was developed using a model of a spheri- questions pertaining to the world and its resources. At the cal icosahedron, which is an icosahedron exploded onto the conclusion of the Expo, prizes would be given to authors of surface of a sphere. The engineers hired for the project— essays discussing pertinent issues as developed on the World Heger, Simpson and Gumpertz—aided Fuller, Sadao and Map. The exhibit would have open sides, screened by trees, Geometrics to develop a double-layer space frame out of and include exhibits that would surround areas of the map’s Fuller’s basic design of the icosahedron. By using the com- perimeter. Balconies were to be placed on all sides of the puter program MAST, the engineers were able to subdivide map that would allow visitors to see the map and therefore the icosahedron and help develop the final design for the the world in its entirety [3]. Later, Fuller, with Shoji Sadao, U.S. Pavilion [7]. would further develop his Total Exhibit Package, which in- Because an icosahedron has 20 equal sides and 12 equal cluded the Dymaxion Map and his World Game, underneath poles, the largest polyhedron has equal triangular sides and a tetrahedronal truss structure supported by four columns 12 vertices. Therefore, a sphere could be erected that would (Fig. 2). contain 20 equal triangles. For the U.S. Pavilion, the struts According to Peter Chermayeff of Cambridge Seven, who needed to be quite large and subdivided in order to cre- Dalvesco, R. Buckminster Fuller, the Expo ’67 Pavilion and the Atoms for Peace Program 487 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01157 by guest on 01 October 2021 as the United States redirected atoms used during war into the atoms used for peacetime applications [13]. By 1954, the United States had enough uranium to allow it to promote the international use of nuclear technology pioneers and pathbreakers for peaceful purposes without detracting from its military supplies. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was soon created in order to manage atomic energy internationally. A fever of nuclear utopianism subsequently spread during the 1950s and 1960s [14]. In 1955, Harold E. Stassen, Eisenhower’s Special Assistant on Disarmament, claimed that nuclear en- ergy would create a new kind of world in the future: [A world] in which there is no disease . where hunger is unknown . where food never rots and crops never spoil . where “dirt” is an old-fashioned word, and routine household tasks are just a matter of pushing a few buttons . a world where no one stokes a furnace or curses the smog, where the air is everywhere as fresh as on a mountain top and the breeze from a factory as sweet as from a rose. Imagine, the world of the future . the world that nuclear energy can create for us [15]. However, the control of the peaceful application of the atom also implied the control of the military use of atomic Fig. 4. The double-layer space frame of the U.S.
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