ASM Headquarters and Geodesic Dome

About this property

The ASM International Headquarters and Geodesic Dome, at the Materials Park campus in Russell Township, Geauga County, Ohio, United States, are the headquarters of ASM International, a professional organization for materials scientists and engineers. These modernist structures were built in 1958 and dedicated in September 1959. The campus serves as the headquarters of ASM International, formerly the American Society for Metals. The dome is the "world's largest open air geodesic dome", and is rare among Synergetics, Inc.-designed geodesic domes in that it was never intended to be a covered structure. Originally serving as headquarters for the American Society for Metals in September 1959, the geodesic dome was built on a 100-acre parcel donated by William Hunt Eisenman (1886–1958), a charter member of the American Society of Metals and its secretary for nearly four decades. In 1961, ASM purchased William Hunt Eisenman's Sunnimoor Farm and 400-acres of land adjacent to the ASM campus. The complex was designed by John Terrence Kelly, a native of Elyria, Ohio. There are differing opinions on R. Buckminster Fuller's role in the design of ASM's dome. While Fuller was a founding partner of Synergetics, Inc. and a patent holder for geodesic dome geometry, he was divested of all interest in Synergetics, Inc. before this dome was conceived. The geodesic dome was designed by Thomas C. Howard, the owner of Synergetics, Inc., in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thomas C. Howard designed many other geodesic domes, such as Climatron Conservatory at Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Union Tank Car Company dome (now demolished) in Baton Rouge, LA, and Poliedro de Caracas in Venezuela. Fuller's role was limited to licensing the use of his patent. In a 2010 essay, Stan Theobald, retired ASM managing director (2002-2012), recalls that the dome engineers were from the College of Engineering at the North Carolina State University stating, "since they were the only Engineers that Bucky [Fuller] used." Throughout his 32-page essay, Theobald refers to the "dome Engineers," speaking very little of any involvement by Fuller, which would seem to indicate that Kelly used Fuller's principles, while other engineers made them work for this unique open-air, above grade project. Theobald elaborated on the spring 1958 groundbreaking and formal announcement dinner that followed at the Union Club in Cleveland, Ohio where Fuller was the guest speaker. Theobald describes Fuller's presentation as "a marathon, rambling dissertation" in which he proposed "that the most important advances on the future would be invisible." In his essay, Theobald compares Fuller's vision from 1958 to reality in 2010, an era of the Internet, DNA, genome mapping, and nano technology.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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