Building and designing Digitalism’s Idealistic

Digitalism’s Idealistic LP cover design: this post is a bit the shortened backstage of the building of the dome - originally designed by Buckminster Fuller. The dome has been setup in early summer 2007 in the Manor Gardens (aka the allotment) in London, near Hackney Wick. Since then, this very same allotment has been ripped off and destroyed by the works for the Olympics 2012 in East London…

Idealistic… yeah…

That was a month or so before my body improvement (i feel so GOOD now!), we worked with Åbäke on the building of the dome and design of the Idealistic LP for Digitalism, released on Kitsuné.

After a few trials and error, we finally got it right and were able to erect the structure of the dome in the middle of my flat; the wooden bits were pierced and maintained to each other using some cable tightener.

One of the small model we realised at a smaller scale, juxtaposed here with a picture of geodesic dome

Our geodesic dome being build in between the office, the kitchen and the bathroom - ah! the pleasure of designing in an open spaces.

The cable tightener and how the wooden bits were holding each other: pretty rough but really effective. The advantage of that design is its flexibility.

Geodesic Domes designed by Buckminster Fuller for the Canada’s expo 67 in Montreal. Image by caribb - Creative Commons Licence

As Wikipedia states it, the utopia of Buckminster Fuller can be summarised by this sentence which went along all his life: “Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?”

‘Utopia Or Oblivion - the perspects for Humanity’ by R Buckminster Fuller. Image found on Utopia or Oblivion

Fuller was most famous for his geodesic domes, which can be seen as part of military radar stations, civic buildings, and exhibition attractions. Their construction is based on extending some basic principles to build simple tensegrity structures (tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of spheres), making them lightweight and stable. The patent for geodesic domes was awarded in 1954, part of Fuller’s exploration of nature’s constructing principles to find design solutions. The Fuller Dome is referenced in the Hugo Award winning novel Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, where a geodesic dome is said to cover the entire island of Manhattan, but, due to hot-air balloon effect of the large air-mass under the dome, (and perhaps its construction of lightweight materials), it floats on air.

Buckminster Fuller on Wikipedia

Some of his other covers are quite amazing:

Images found on Utopia or Oblivion

Additional resources

On wikipedia, you have a huge geometrical and mathematical design resource but it’s maybe with the Burning Man’s attendees that you might find some very specific and interesting documents, a bit more practical in case you would wish to build your own dome. One of the webiste we used, after the few trial and error at reduced scales, is the Desert Dome Calculator for 2V version. Also: help and interesting readings can be found at The Geodesic Club House, and also a practical How to build a Geodesic Dome out of Cardboard; just add a few searches on Flickr about Geodesic domes - just to make sure it would be possible

Life Island (or Life Is Land - I never know) is the website where the gardeners kept the fight, it still is on and rocking. if you live in East London and you search for a bit more of sustainable and green nature, art & culture, they’re worth the click: read them!

Also, after this nice chat i just had with her, I can’t help but link also to Miranda - who’s nickname is Dodeckahedron; she seems to have a certain fascination for things geometrically constructed, but you will discover all this by yourself if you read her design, urbanism and art oriented blog. Lots of interesting comments and exploration goes on there.

You can find:
More picture of the initial setup of the dome can be found on this Flickr set and Digitalism ‘Idealistic’ release on Kitsuné Music.

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