a good idea.
Submitted by napkin rings

Dear Steve,
how do we go about purchasing a set of 25ft if I'm in Finland EU?

Best Regards,
Peter Babkin
project manager
gravitonium oy
+35 81 376 1312

www.gravitonium.ru
www.gravitonium.eu

Hello Ben, Andrew Owens here. I'm also living in Japan, in the Tokyo/Kanto region. Please send me an email by clicking on my name in the title bar of this post and select the 'contact' tab, and we can chat about your dome ideas. If you read on further, you'll find that the BFI is the owner of the master molds that Bucky designed. They are 24-foot and 50-foot. The 24-footer would be 450 square feet with a loft and might make a small apartment for one or two people. And the 50-footer would accommodate two or three stories and be 4000 to 5500 square feet. One is a bit too small and the other is a bit too big for most people in my opinion, although I could live in the small one myself without any problem.
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As you may already know, Bucky had many pre-orders for the Wichita house but could not get funding for the tooling to set-up production. Additionally, there was no way to distribute the houses, and the unions would not allow the pre-wired and pre-piped systems to be installed. They insisted that all wiring and plumbing be torn out and reinstalled by union personnel.
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I too want to live in a Fly's Eye Dome house, so I guess some of our options are:
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A) Borrow the molds from the BFI and have a professional fiberglass shop make the dome parts, and then pay an architect and a construction company to design and make the house for us.
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B) Borrow the molds from the BFI and have a professional fiberglass shop make the parts for us and then design and build the houses ourselves.
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C) Do what Bucky suggested; spontaneous collaboration. Make our own master molds and learn to make the parts ourselves. Design and build a refined working prototype house. Start a non-profit employee-&-customer owned Coop. and make the houses for ourselves. These houses would be autonomous, that is, they would not be required to be connected to the electric, water, or sewer grids. That should piss-off our corporate slave masters real good.
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If we design a house that could be disassembled and relocated, I think that many people would be interested in getting on board. Since our fearless leaders in Washington have already planned to start WWIII with Israel, Iran, and the entire Middle East, (WWIV for Bucky aficionados) we can be assured a continuous supply of new employee/customers as the price of oil surges to $300/barrel in the next 10 years.
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Anyway, I have professional 3D CAD software for design and all the skills necessary for such a project, and I even have some preliminary renderings of a Fly's Eye Dome house model if you are interested.
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Cheers,
Andy

This is my first comment on any of the forums on this site. In his books Bucky often talks about people "spontaniously" adopting his artifacts as solutions in times of crisis. Well, I'm ready! My brother and his his finacee recently bought a 170,000 dollar house near Cleveland Ohio. "Bought" in the sense of "going to be paying for for the rest of their natural lives. I've been living in Japan for several years now and I've missed the housing price bubble, so I have no idea what decent price for a home should be. If someone could built or rent me a fly's eye or hell, even the Dymaxion or Witchita houses for less I would be extremely grateful. In short, my question is this, how many people reading this site want and would be ready to put down some money on a fly's eye dome? Am I just a market of one?

I am a 'new participant' in this forum, but I have a lot of 'history' with the Fly's Eye dome series. I am still a consultant with the project. I am going to present to you some true, verifiable historical facts about the Fly's Eye dome series.

First of all and most important, Buckminster Fuller contracted with me in the mid-1970s to build the master patterns for the Fly's Eye dome series. The fiberglass work was done at a Costa Mesa, California company named Molded Fiberglass Concrete Forms (MFG). Bucky personally paid for the tooling and all parts for every Fly's Eye dome which was built by MFG. It was a considerable personal expenditure, even for those times. This was an industrial scale committment - not simple model building. All the Class-A tooling and all the parts were owned by Bucky personally. It was his property. It was his personal endeavor.

Please be aware that I am referring to a specific industrial project which spanned the years from 1975 to 1983 (the year Bucky died). With certainty, I can tell you the exact date was January 12th, 1975 as I witnessed a drawing which Bucky made of the Fly's Eye and initialled it at his request. For me, this started a long series of projects working directly for Bucky.

Skipping a lot of history ........

At the time of Bucky's death in 1983, the tooling was stored in my shop (partially paid for by Bucky). Due to uncertain financial future after Bucky's death, his estate managers decided to move the tooling to a free storage location in the high desert of California. A gentleman named Wil Fideroff had offered free storage for all the tooling and parts. It was a very gracious offer at the time. The Fuller estate managers accepted the offer.

During storage of the tooling and parts, Wil Fideroff and his associate assembled the 24' Fly's Eye on their property. It also appeared that they 'splashed' tooling from some of the Fly's Eye dome parts.

In the fiberglass industry, the term 'splashed tooling' refers to unauthorized mold (or master mold) creation in a clandestine manner. It is a short-cut which an unauthorized person can take to possibly capitalize upon the hard work and financial outlay of others (Buckminster Fuller in this case).

I am not going to try and rationalize the motivation for anyone to splash Fly's Eye tooling which belonged to the Buckminster Fuller estate. That FACT speaks for itself.

Time passes ...

In the subsequent years between storage of the original Fly's Eye tooling in the high desert, it was eventually moved to other locations including Long Beach State University (Laydown Yard), Santa Barbara boatyard and to the property of Neil Katz in Sebastapol. The tooling also spent a brief time at the Fiberglass plant of Performance Composites in Torrance where it was used to make a dome purchased by Brad Twoomey of Trinidad, CA.

Currently the tooling for Bucky's personal Fly's Eye dome series is owned by the Buckminster Fuller Institute. The direct artifacts consist of a 12' diameter prototype model, 24'Fly's Eye tooling and dome as well as a 50' Fly's Eye dome and tooling.

It needs to be said that one of Bucky's students, with my coaching, built his own tooling without taking any short cuts. John Kuhtik personally built his own set of molds and masters for a 3-frequency Fly's Eye dome at a diameter of 33'. This is a very nicely crafted structure which is in residence at The Longhouse Reserve in New York. This dome and it's tooling is the personal property of John Kuhtik.

In order to obtain a Fly's Eye dome or enter into a dialog which can result in obtaining a Fly's Eye dome, I suggest you contact the Buckminster Fuller Institute and they will contact a fiberglass fabricator for manufacture of one of these structures. I would also recommend that you directly contact John Kuhtik (through the BFI) to obtain one of his domes.

Although, as Andrew Owens has stated, "...anybody can build in their garage...", I would suggest that such an undertaking is better attempted by a professional factory. I also would suggest that if you MUST BUILD YOUR OWN FLY'S EYE, that you loft it yourself from the mathematics instead of splashing someone else's parts. The basic information for understanding any geodesic dome is published as a reference material in Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics volume I and II.

John Warren

Dear A. W. Pemberton,
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Did you contact www.sphericalfiberglassdesigns.com as stated above? They sell them, according to their website. My guess is that they are not cheap. Please let us know how much they are. Supposedly, the BFI owns the tooling for its dome, which I believe, is a 26-footer.
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All the Fly's-Eye-Domes constructed so far are fiberglass, which anybody can build in their garage if they want to. What's basically needed to make the dome shell from fiberglass is a master-mold (tooling), and a fiberglass spray gun. This is the technique that has been used so far. Of course other equipment and tools are also needed, but you can make the dome yourself much cheaper than having it done for you. The problem is that if you make a mistake with the design, you'll have to start again from scratch, and this will increase any up-front investment each time. Nevertheless, this is what I would do, because you'll never learn anything unless you make the mistakes for yourself. I'd start with fiberglass scale models.
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Fiberglass is not enjoyable to work with. You must have skin protection and work in a well-ventilated area. Fiberglass is itchy if it gets in the skin, and the plastic or epoxy resins used to bind it are noxious, toxic, and irritating to skin, eyes, and lungs. Once the parts are properly designed, made, and maintained, they will last a long time. If you want your dome to last, you must protect it from the sun by the application of a proper surface coating.
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Creating the master-molds is the most difficult part, but they can be made relatively inexpensively if you are clever. As with any composite technology, manual labor is the bulk of the cost. Only one mold is needed per unique shape. In the case of the 26-foot Fly's-Eye-Dome, you'll need one Y-shaped hyperbolic saddle-form mold and one circular mold for the holes. If you want the larger 50-foot dome design, two hyperbolic saddle-form molds are required.
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What is meant by spray fiberglass is chopped fiberglass from a spool being chopped, mixed, and sprayed from a special gun onto the mold. Unfortunately, spray fiberglass is the oldest, weakest and heaviest way to make a composite structure. If one forgoes the spray equipment, you can use fiberglass cloth to construct your pieces, which will give you either a much stronger dome, or a correspondingly lightweight dome. There is also something called fiberglass mat, which is just chopped fiberglass on a roll that gives you an end product that is the same strength as spray fiberglass, so we won't consider it here. Fiberglass cloth is a continuous but woven form of fiberglass, so it is much stronger than chopped fiberglass. Cloth composite technology is usually used with a process called vacuum bagging, which sucks all the extra plastic or epoxy resin out of the cloth, and produces very lightweight and strong structures. Making 2-layer composite structures with a rigid foam or honeycomb core can further enhance this technique by greatly increasing rigidity and strength, with only a moderate increase in weight.
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If you really want to have a super-strong and lightweight dome, you can replace the fiberglass with Kevlar (bullet resistant) or carbon fiber, which are both used to build spacecraft and jet fighters. For example, one person could lift a 26-foot Fly's-Eye-Dome constructed in this manner.
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Spray fiberglass technology could be combined with Kevlar or carbon fiber for increased strength and weight reduction. It could also be used for mass production if many of the same master molds were made, but this would require a considerable up-front investment, and the end product would not be recyclable. Bucky knew that we should only employ our most advanced technology for maximum advantage. The Fly's-Eye-Dome outer shell would ideally be made of hydraulic press formed steel, as car body parts are now formed. With proper design and insulation, these domes would make fine houses that could be assembled in a few days by two people.
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That is all for now.
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Sincerely,
Andrew Owens

Would anyone hazard a guess as to my chances of buying one of these domes, either now or in the future? What would it take to make them available?

Thank you Steve for your contribution, I was mystified that apparently nothing has been done with the Fly's Eye since its' creation and for a begining cost of roughly $5000 the concept should take flight easily. Thanks again.

Spherical Fiberglass Designs.com
25 years ago I had the 25 and 50-foot fly's eye domes in my possession. I was storing them for the fuller institute. I have over 30 years experience building dome structures and fiberglass racecars and electric vehicles with fiberglass bodies. I have built the 25-foot fly's eye 4 to 5 times for my own use and fuller exhibits. I helped build the 50' fly's eye one time in southern California where it was created. I do have molds for both the 25' and 50' fly's eye domes. I have the facilities equipment and technical history to reproduce these buildings. There are 50 fiberglass triangles not including the plastic windows (the fly's eyes). It would cost close to 100$ to produce each triangle materials and labor. These buildings are truly unique in the world of spherical structures. A proper donation to the man how created the ideas, insperation, and funding would be my requirement before I reproduced and or built the buildings.
Spherical Structures.com