Fuller Speaking at the Mary Brown Center Event
1 media/Bucky Speaking_thumb.jpg 2020-04-27T23:31:48+00:00 David Thompson f9dd88556180b38187c27d862fc17e8c454d3fa5 51 2 Buckminster Fuller presents to the community at the Mary Brown Center. Around him in the room is a small diorama of the Old Man River project design, the large panel with the photograph of the diorama, and a photo of Fuller's dymaxion map. Credit to Dennis Cope for providing this photograph plain 2020-05-04T17:44:13+00:00 David Thompson f9dd88556180b38187c27d862fc17e8c454d3fa5This page is referenced by:
-
1
2020-05-01T00:10:18+00:00
Event at the Mary Brown Center
18
On February 25, 1971 the designers of the Old Man River and community members from East St. Louis gathered at the Mary Brown Center to discuss the projected idea of a domed city.
plain
2020-05-06T02:30:00+00:00
Buckminster Fuller's utopian vision of the Old Man River's City Project collided with the proagmatic realism of the East St. Louis community at the Mary Brown Center on February 25, 1971. The Mary Brown Center, located in East St. Louis, is one of Fuller’s many successful geodesic domes. Residents and concerned citizens of the community gathered to observe the unveiling of the proposed housing solution which included a panel presentation, photos, drawings and models of the inovative design developed by Fuller and Fitzgibbon, assisted by several students and faculty members at Wahington University.The presentation panel started with Fuller speaking to the community on regarding the background and aspirations of the project. He then answered questions from the residents of the city. Various community members voiced concerns with the project as they perceived the design of the dome as prison-like. Many citizens of East St. Louis at the event were anxious that if the project moved forward, they would lose their homes. According to interviews with some of the students and faculty who were present at the event, the project’s ambitious concepts did not represent the solution the community felt were needed. In retrospect, the domed city was an overarching answer that did not correspond to a more focused question. The city required dedicated funds from the state to help rebuild and restructure from the ground up, not encompass the community in a dome. The event at the Mary Brown Center stood as a test for the ideas of the Old Man River's City project, the feedback the designer team recieved forced them to make drastic design changes to the model. One of those design changes was to raise the dome off the ground, thus negating the desired use of the dome as an energy-efficient means of sustaining the community. The event was an example of what happens when idealism and theory meet real-world problems.
a
a
< Buckminster Fuller and his Utopian Vision The Design Pathway >
