Geodesic dreams

From first experiments in the 1940s through to the proliferation of DIY domes in the 1970s, the exhibition at UQAM explores the “geodesic moment” in architecture.

Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao, American pavilion, Expo '67, Montreal

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the most famous geodesic dome in the world: the US Pavilion at Expo 67, designed by R. Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao. From first experiments undertaken in the late 1940s through the proliferation of DIY domes in the early 1970s, the exhibition “Montréal’s Geodesic Dreams” at UQAM Centre de design explores the “geodesic moment” in architecture. It will reveal the forgotten role of Montréal and Québec in the development of this innovative structural system that captured the 20th-century architectural imagination.

The exhibition focuses on the work of the Montréal designer Jeffrey Lindsay (1924–84), founder and director of the Fuller Research Foundation Canadian Division based in Montréal between 1949 and 1956. Photographs, drawings, books, documents, drawing instruments and design tools on loan from the Fonds Jeffrey Lindsay of the University of Calgary’s Canadian Architectural Archives and various other archives and collections will highlight the intricacy of those spherical structures. The exhibition will also feature a series of models, structural details at 1:1 scale, and a prototype 6 m diameter geodesic dome designed and built by Studio Cube with a team of students from UQAM’s École de design.

Jeffrey Lindsay, Weatherbreak construction, 1950

21 September – 10 December 2017
Montréal’s Geodesic Dreams
UQAM Centre de Design
1440 Sanguinet Street, Montreal

Geodesic dreams

From first experiments in the 1940s through to the proliferation of DIY domes in the 1970s, the exhibition at UQAM explores the “geodesic moment” in architecture.

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