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• 1 2020-04-21T01:00:16+00:00 The Design Pathway 51 A brief look at how the design and description of the Old Man River's City Project shifted from 1971 to 1976 plain 2020-05-09T04:39:49+00:00 The Initial Presentation:
  The unveiling of the Old Man River's City project to the public occured in February 1971 at the Mary Brown Center in East St. Louis. The original design of the dome made use of an onion-like silhouette. Fuller believed that the onion-like shape would allow for the climate in the dome to be regulated. The designs that the faculty and students of Washington University worked on were based on Fuller’s ideals but were put into practice by James Fitzgibbon, Fuller’s good friend and senior faculty member of the architecture department.
  The residential area was designed much like a mountain with terraced apartments. Efficiency was the primary focus of the design, and the designers believed the mountain-like shape could comfortably house the most amount of people in a limited space. Student architect Bill Wischmeyer volunteered his time to develop a system of roads and bridges that would connect East St. Louis to the world outside of the dome, as the dome itself would be to be flush with the ground. According to Carl Safe, a new faculty member at Washington University at the time, Fuller would come for very brief meetings leaving the majority of the design work to Fitzgibbon and the students. Safe recollected that a few consultations transpired in the airport and that Fuller would even tear out pieces of the diorama if he felt they did not fit the design.
  
  The design team believed the design would cost approximately $500 Million, which calculates to just about $3 Billion in today’s economy. Based on interviews with those involved, these estimated costs were hypothetical based on the amounts of steel and other materials that would be needed. Fuller and the designers at Washington University anticipated that 28,000 families could reside inside the dome.
  
  The Umbrella Dome:
  By 1974, a new model had been unveiled, and the design implemented a new dome layout that resembled a lifted umbrella over 100 feet in the air and a new residential area using a “moon crater” scheme for the apartments. The updated design was due to concerns from the community that the dome resembled a prison, asking questions of who would reside inside and outside the city. The new design was projected to be able to accommodate 115,000 people. Discussions regarding the possibility of building a walk-in model also coalesced in 1974. Student architect Dennis Cope advised that once the dome came off the ground, the philosophy of energy-efficient climate control had disappeared.
  
  The Walk-In Model:
  By 1975, the design assumedly had been revised again; the scheme was altered to include the “moon crater” interior previously considered and a return to the onion-like dome. The images provided of the walk-in model support the presumption of the new design. The revised layout had increased the cost to an estimated $800 Million, or in today's value, $3.8 Billion after consideration of inflation. 
  In 1976, Fuller and Wyvetter Younge were tireless advocates of the project, strategizing potential ways to increase the public support. There was a discussion of possibly building the walk-in model, and holding a fundraiser to finance the construction at a projected cost of $500,000.
  That fundraiser involved selling $5 membership cards to the Old Man River's City Project development corps. Governmental leaders considered a small scale model, but Fuller was against the idea. He believed it would mislead the population of East St. Louis of the project’s details.
  The proposal itself had widely fluctuating figures for the population size. At the beginning of the year, local news articles indicated that 40,000 people could live within the dome, but only a few months later, new sources were reporting that 250,000 people could live inside. Another source indicated the estimated population fluctuated to 80,000 people and the cost between $2 Billion and $7-8 Billion, depending on which year the information was reported. 
  The local news delivered much of the information the public had. Due to this, the accuracy of the data is in question. Still, we do know how the designers wished for the dome itself to look and that Fuller preferred to avoid governmental assistance to make sure the community was able to facilitate its individual needs in the design.
  
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