Old Man River's City
March 16, 2015 7:31 AM Subscribe
Old Man River's City. A mile-wide moated and domed crater-shaped community structure designed by Buckminster Fuller in the 1970s for East St Louis, IL.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble
Kind of like the Minnesota Experimental City, the plans of which are only available in the state archives as far as I know. I love stuff like this.
posted by Think_Long at 7:59 AM on March 16, 2015
posted by Think_Long at 7:59 AM on March 16, 2015
I don't know how you can have a vision for something like this and not additionally see the dystopic angles. Noise, for one. I wouldn't want to be in the center of the thing when the sun lensed either. Meantime, those at the core get to enjoy a half mile distant view of the nearest window and spend lots of time snaking down dim, anonymous corridors through the belly of the thing.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:12 AM on March 16, 2015
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:12 AM on March 16, 2015
No professional sports team would ever agree to play in that stadium. Almost half of the residents could watch the games from their apartments for free. Nobody would buy tickets.
posted by overhauser at 8:13 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by overhauser at 8:13 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Copycat! Copycat!
(But they didn't need modern earth movers!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:13 AM on March 16, 2015
(But they didn't need modern earth movers!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:13 AM on March 16, 2015
Copycat! Copycat!
Nothing in those links seems particularly like what Fuller envisioned.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:19 AM on March 16, 2015
Nothing in those links seems particularly like what Fuller envisioned.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:19 AM on March 16, 2015
This reads to me like a techno-utopian, somewhat-less-thought-out version of Paolo Soleri's Arcology work (eg: Arcosanti). The arcology stuff at least has a bunch of semi-plausible engineering behind it, in terms of passive solar ventilation, etc, and a community that's building livable/workable proof-of-concept spaces.
posted by Alterscape at 8:35 AM on March 16, 2015
posted by Alterscape at 8:35 AM on March 16, 2015
And this City shall be overseen by a Computer to ensure maximum efficiency:
The City Computer is your friend. The City Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by summary banishment from the City.
> Are you happy?
> _
posted by Vindaloo at 8:39 AM on March 16, 2015
The City Computer is your friend. The City Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by summary banishment from the City.
> Are you happy?
> _
posted by Vindaloo at 8:39 AM on March 16, 2015
Steely-eyed Missile Man: "Nothing in those links seems particularly like what Fuller envisioned."
Actually a lot of the inward-facing community life on a central plaza, concentric circles, utilization of mounds to organize the community, etc., immediately made me think of the mound builders. Since the sites are so incomplete it's not immediately visually apparent, but the shape of the thing reminded me a LOT of the mounds, and his organizing principles for the community would be quite familiar to the Mississippian Mound Builders.
At least we already know East St. Louis is a good site for building big, circular, inward-facing, earth-berm-and-mound-based communities!
In fact the first thing I started wondering -- since he intends it to be a fairly self-contained community -- is how he envisions the agriculture for the city being organized, since the Mississippians had some very interesting ways of using the river bottoms to feed such a large population in such a small space, before modern farming and before modern urban agglomerations & their density became typical.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:43 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Actually a lot of the inward-facing community life on a central plaza, concentric circles, utilization of mounds to organize the community, etc., immediately made me think of the mound builders. Since the sites are so incomplete it's not immediately visually apparent, but the shape of the thing reminded me a LOT of the mounds, and his organizing principles for the community would be quite familiar to the Mississippian Mound Builders.
At least we already know East St. Louis is a good site for building big, circular, inward-facing, earth-berm-and-mound-based communities!
In fact the first thing I started wondering -- since he intends it to be a fairly self-contained community -- is how he envisions the agriculture for the city being organized, since the Mississippians had some very interesting ways of using the river bottoms to feed such a large population in such a small space, before modern farming and before modern urban agglomerations & their density became typical.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:43 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
A tornado would break the shit out of that dome, though.
posted by BlueJae at 9:57 AM on March 16, 2015
posted by BlueJae at 9:57 AM on March 16, 2015
overhauser: "No professional sports team would ever agree to play in that stadium. Almost half of the residents could watch the games from their apartments for free. Nobody would buy tickets."
I don;t think anyone lives in the center; it's allocated for communal use. Besides, having the stadium for non-professional use seems like a win.
posted by Mitheral at 10:28 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don;t think anyone lives in the center; it's allocated for communal use. Besides, having the stadium for non-professional use seems like a win.
posted by Mitheral at 10:28 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Actually...
Actually, what it reminded me of most (although really still not all that much) was Arkaim. The Cahokia mound settlements as depicted in the sites you linked remind me much more of depictions I have seen of Mesopotamian cities organized around(ish) the temple.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:50 AM on March 16, 2015
Actually, what it reminded me of most (although really still not all that much) was Arkaim. The Cahokia mound settlements as depicted in the sites you linked remind me much more of depictions I have seen of Mesopotamian cities organized around(ish) the temple.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:50 AM on March 16, 2015
This is exactly what is wrong with 'utopian' planners. Frank Lloyd Wright did this same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale with individual residences: "I am the Almighty Designer, and I command you to live according to My design --- I, as the Designer, know far more than mere you what you lifestyle SHOULD be, and you must change your lifestyle to suit my design." Never mind that you might have different tastes and preferences: they are the designer, and you are just a replaceable cog that must be trimmed to fit, rather than the design being adjusted to fit the resident.
posted by easily confused at 12:10 PM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by easily confused at 12:10 PM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
For a while there people really went nuts for domes, for no other reason than DOMES! apparently. The city has some interesting features, though I wonder where everyone's supposed to work. The dome is just crazypants. You're going to take a nearly-flat glass surface and put it 500 feet in the air? How do you keep it waterproof? How do you keep it clean, since everyone's getting all their sunlight through it? How do you deal with the TORRENTIAL downpour at the edges?
The funny thing is that ten or twenty years after the craze started, enough people had actually built and (attempted to) maintain domes that we collectively realized they're not good for much after all. They're completely absent from recent architecture. It's too bad, actually; a small dome to mark an important part of a major building is quite nice, and upkeep isn't impossible.
posted by echo target at 3:17 PM on March 16, 2015
The funny thing is that ten or twenty years after the craze started, enough people had actually built and (attempted to) maintain domes that we collectively realized they're not good for much after all. They're completely absent from recent architecture. It's too bad, actually; a small dome to mark an important part of a major building is quite nice, and upkeep isn't impossible.
posted by echo target at 3:17 PM on March 16, 2015
Buckminster Fuller did manage to inspire the construction of a much, much smaller see-through dome on the west side of the Mississippi, in St. Louis, that is still doing quite well for itself, though it did at one point need extensive repairs.
posted by BlueJae at 3:55 PM on March 16, 2015
posted by BlueJae at 3:55 PM on March 16, 2015
Domes are one of the advances that sadly became popular before the material science was adequate. I'd owner build a high wall, wood frame, dome roof house in a heartbeat today (well if I couldn't build a earth sheltered home) because modern membranes solve the roof seam leak problem and TJIs and spray in place foam insulation solve the insulation problems. It would still be a huge amount of work compared to trusses but it would be cool as hell.
posted by Mitheral at 8:49 PM on March 16, 2015
posted by Mitheral at 8:49 PM on March 16, 2015
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From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others"
As time passes it become increasingly clear that Bucky Fuller was completely insane.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:40 AM on March 16, 2015 [3 favorites]