'The ultimate in Yankee ingenuity'
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Toolbox
Published: October 12, 2008
When R. Buckminster Fuller walked to the microphone, the crowd of nearly 1,000 people had a pretty good idea what he would say. But they came to listen anyway.
Fuller was the world's leading, or at least most famous, futuristic architect and inventor – he preferred to call himself a "comprehensive, anticipatory design scientist" or, more simply, a "comprehensivist." The 84-year-old Fuller was the keynote speaker at the International Dome Symposium hosted by St. Michael's College in March 1980. He knew a thing or two about domes, having invented the geodesic dome, a metal structure enveloped by a thin membrane that offered a sturdy and comparatively inexpensive way to cover large areas, like industrial storage facilities, sports fields or, say, the city of Winooski.
Fuller had proven that the first applications worked; he was in Vermont to argue that the third application was equally viable. Think of it as a super Superdome. The suggestion that Winooski could be domed had been discussed seriously at city council meetings, in the newspapers and in living rooms. Opinion divided over whether it was an innovative proposal or merely an insane idea. But the time seemed ripe for unconventional thinking. The year was 1980 and the United States was suffering from high energy prices. A dome over Winooski, supporters argued, was a reasonable response, since, they argued, it could cut the city's heating costs by 90 percent.
To some, Fuller's presence at the conference gave the sense that Winooski was on the cutting edge. To others, however, it suggested the city had gone over that edge. Fuller will always be remembered for his geodesic domes, but he also dreamt up a flying car, a prefab bathroom unit (which came complete with pre-installed toilet, tub and sink) and a giant domed Japanese island city that could hold 1 million people and float in Tokyo Bay. "Fuller's schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals)," Elizabeth Kolbert recently wrote in the New Yorker.
During his speech in Winooski, Fuller didn't speak to the specifics of doming the city. Instead, in a wide-ranging talk citing everything from the discovery by 19th century British political economist Thomas Malthus that the world's population was growing faster than our ability to support life to the recent crossing of the English Channel by the ultra-lightweight, human-power aircraft The Gossamer Condor, Fuller said the world needed to learn to do more with less.
For all the public interest in Fuller, the Winooski dome wasn't his idea. Winooski's Community Development Director Mark Tigan was its leading proponent, though he credited an official with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) with originating the idea.
"It would be the ultimate in Yankee ingenuity," Tigan told Time magazine in December 1979. Tigan explained that the city was considering one-dome and two-dome options. If one dome were built, it would be large enough to cover 850 acres. If two were built, a 25-acre dome would cover the downtown core and a 50-acre dome would cover the city's industrial park. Also to be determined, Tigan said, was whether a dome could be retracted in good weather.
Some local residents united around the issue, forming the Golden Onion Dome Club. The "onion" part of the name referred to the city's name (Winooski means wild onion in Abenaki), not the shape of the dome, which in sketches looked more a giant contact lens. Club members created bumper stickers, T-shirts, even a song, supporting the unusual proposal. It's unclear whether they thought a dome was a good idea or just plain funny.
(The words to the song, "Dome Over Winooski," were: "Dome over Winooski,/ Not far from the lake;/ Transparent and plastic,/ Still real and not fake.")
Not surprisingly, people raised concerns about the dome. Beyond questioning its feasibility and its potential to interfere with the flight path of the nearby Burlington airport, some residents said they didn't want to be isolated from the natural world. Others had a more mundane worry: Who would wash the dome's windows? One answer: members of the city road crew who would no longer have to plow the streets.
Some people suggested that in addition to reducing Winooski's energy consumption, a dome could make Winooski a tourist attraction. One local writer quipped that Winooski might become a popular winter vacation alternative to Florida.
To answer these and other questions, the city's Community Development Committee voted 3-2 to apply for a $55,000 HUD grant to commission a feasibility study.
"A lot of people think it's a bizarre idea until you sit them down and explain it to them," Tigan said in a United Press International story. "Once people listen, we haven't heard a single negative person."
Shoji Sadao, Fuller's partner in his New York City architecture firm, also said a city-sized dome might be possible. In fact, Fuller and Sadao had proposed a two-mile diameter dome for the north end of Manhattan. "Maybe we're getting out of the realm where this is just a pipe dream or visionary, and slowly getting into the realm of the practical," Sadao told Time.
Toward the end of his Winooski speech, Fuller called on people to think beyond the conventional. While working for the federal government as a scientist during World War II, Fuller said, he had discovered that he could get automobile engines to run more efficiently and with fewer emissions by fueling them with alcohol instead of gasoline. But, he said, word of his experiments never got out. He smelled a conspiracy.
"Nobody has any idea how incredibly powerful oil money really is," Fuller said. "It is controlling advertising, and newspapers cannot publish unless they have advertising."
Still, he saw reason for hope. Fuller said he had been born into a world that was 95 percent illiterate. By 1980, he said, most people could read and an informed populous could make good decisions.
"Humanity is now literate, and it is a wonderful thing that your community, Winooski, has stood up and said let's make some sense," he said. "I couldn't be more encouraged by what has happened here."
But you might have noticed that Winooski doesn't have a dome over it today. After the dome conference, the Department of Housing and Urban Development rejected the city's request for money to study the proposal, and the idea died.
Before the proposal was rejected, however, Mark Tigan said he viewed the dome idea as a long-term solution, not a quick fix. A dome, he said, has "never been examined on this scale before. It's time to look at some of these things that people think are flaky but might be turning to in the next 10 or 15 years."
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