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Dome Architecture: Drop City and Beyond — MCA Denver Blog (2011)
Source: Steve Baer / Zomeworks archive
MCA Denver Blog — November 9, 2011
Source URL: https://mcadenver.blogspot.com/2011/11/dome-architecture-drop-city-and-beyond.html
Part of the “West of Center” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
Key content
Framing
Geodesic-based dome architecture was a persistent element of the counterculture landscape in the West. Over 2,000 rural communes were formed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, and the iconic Drop City, near Trinidad, Colorado, was the first of them to use domes. Originally inspired by the visionary ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer, dome structures became a big part of the counterculture mythos.
Baer is placed alongside Fuller as co-originator of the dome counterculture — not as a follower but as a parallel “visionary.” This framing appears in a museum exhibition context (2011), outside the technical documentation sphere.
Dome Cookbook quote
In the Dome Cookbook, Steve Baer wrote about ways that “today’s terrifying man made world” could be improved. The Dome Cookbook encouraged the construction of domes through the scrounging of pre-existing materials, such as car tops.
This is the only known direct quote from Dome Cookbook in the archive. The car-top construction method is the same technique used at Drop City (flattened automobile roofs as zome panels).
Dome Cookbook publication details
The exhibition caption reads:
Steve Baer, Dome Cookbook (Corrales, NM: Lama Foundation, 1969) Third printing of how-to manual, 11¼ × 15 in. Courtesy the artist.
This confirms:
- Publisher: Lama Foundation
- Location: Corrales, NM (not “New Mexico” generically — Baer’s home town)
- Year of the copy shown: 1969 (third printing)
- The first printing was 1968; by 1969 there had already been three printings
Clark Richert artwork
Clark Richert, Drop City Panorama, 1968. Archival digital print, 72 × 28½ in. Courtesy the artist. This panoramic view of Drop City is the primary visual reference for the commune’s dome cluster (a different format from the photographs in the archive’s other Drop City sources).
Publications in the exhibition
“West of Center” featured: Domebook One, Domebook 2, and Dome Cookbook — the three major dome construction manuals of the era.
Significance
- Dome Cookbook edition confirmed: Third printing, 1969, Lama Foundation, Corrales NM. The archive bibliography previously listed “1968, Lama Foundation, out of print by 1975.” The third printing in 1969 confirms sustained demand; the book’s influence extended beyond a single run.
- Baer = Fuller peer: In museum discourse (2011), Baer is named alongside Fuller as the dual inspiration for Drop City’s architecture — not as a Fuller follower.
- “Terrifying man made world” — Baer’s countercultural voice in the Dome Cookbook is consistent with the tone of Sunspots (1975) and Sunmen (2004).
Source: MCA Denver Blog, “Dome Architecture: Drop City and Beyond,” November 9, 2011. URL: https://mcadenver.blogspot.com/2011/11/dome-architecture-drop-city-and-beyond.html