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Bambassador

Bambassador (n.) When Buckminster Fuller was trying to design and build a practical, low-cost shelter for the dense population of the Orient, he decided to build a geodesic dome with bamboo, which is plentiful in the Orient. Then “Bambassador” is brought up with because of its intended application and the materials of which it is made. It is no doubt that bamboo has astonishing strengths. But according to Fuller, despite this, it was no way to take full advantage of its strength under both tension and compression until someone had developed a mathematics for arranging bamboo in a pattern1. Afterwards, a series of experiments were conducted by Fuller and his students at Long Beach State College. Through a few failures, they finally constructed the most economical shelter for the East. Interestingly, Fuller also proposed a shelter for the West in 1960, Dome over Manhattan. This geodesic dome stretching from east to west across the island and from 64th Street to 22nd Street.2 Intriguing questions will be, what the shelter is for, who is inside and who is outside. In my understanding, when related to the popular topic in 1960s, space colonization, Dome over Manhattan was actually an experiment of the New Order, spaceship’s order, or Mars’ order. Inside of the dome, political barriers would be removed and new network between human beings would be constructed.

1. Judith Ransom Miller, “Fuller’s latest dome arises,” Industrial design, v.8 (1961 Feb), p 65.
2. Laura Kurgan, "Threat Domes" Any, no. 17 (1997), p. 32.