The Fuller’s heritage: organic models and artificialmicrocosm in XX century domes.

The dome derives from the arc, developing structural principles of heavy masonry. Buckminster Fuller has developed a quite new design concept to construct light domes improving his “tensegretic structures”. Geodesic domes adopted the spatial symmetries of regular solids, and were inspired by the analysis of the self-balance of cell membrane. Fuller carefully explained that they developed a principle of nature, without copying it as the objects and procedures copying the biological principles cannot be licensed by the law. The study of self-sustaining equilibrium of closed systems and the imitation of cellular energy balance allowed Fuller to turn the dome, born as masonry building, into a light construction. Later on, other architects took back the light dome from different structural principles. All of them evoke organic models reinterpreting the surface membrane, borrowing something from Fuller and yet again reinterpreting his design but not copying him