The massive blizzard that hammered Long Island last week has taken down an important sculpture. Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. That giant whiffle ball thing you’ve probably seen in design books completely caved in. The fibreglass structure, which had weathered three decades of winters, couldn’t handle this one.
“It’s devastating,” said Carrie Rebora Barratt, LongHouse’s director, when reached on Monday. The collapse was discovered that morning by the garden’s groundskeeper. “It’s our most iconic piece in the garden. It’s a backdrop for our galas. It’s on most of our promotional materials.”
“Buckminster Fuller spent much of the early 20th Century looking for ways to improve human shelter”
Fuller patented his Fly’s Eye design back in 1965, part of his whole geodesic, save-the-world-through-design thing. The idea was wildly ambitious: mass-produced housing pods with convex glass windows (hence the fly’s eye reference), complete with plumbing and kitchens, that could be airlifted by helicopter whenever you felt like relocating. Very 1960s. Very Fuller. Never actually happened, of course.
The LongHouse version, fabricated in 1997 by John Kuhtig, one of Fuller’s students, stood 33 feet tall. It’s been the star of their sculpture garden ever since Jack Lenor Larsen, the textile designer who founded the place, first installed it. No glass in the portholes, but still. Imposing as hell.
The timing couldn’t be worse. LongHouse is already scrambling for funds after Larsen died in 2020, leaving behind big dreams but a tiny endowment of about $150,000 a year, which is nothing in Hamptons terms. They’re trying to turn his house into a proper museum, expand programming, and basically transform themselves into a legitimate cultural institution out there among the hedge-fund estates.
Louis Bradbury, the board president, couldn’t even ballpark the replacement cost when we spoke. “Everything would have to be redesigned, with new materials, and they’re all specialised,” he said. How do you value something when there are only four others like it in the world? Foster owns the tiny prototype. Craig Robins built a hurricane-proof version for Miami (smart move, in retrospect). Crystal Bridges has the massive 50-footer that they rescued from near-total decay.
“Fuller’s Geodesic Dome shelters have been built all around the world in different climates and temperatures”
The irony is brutal—LongHouse brings all their delicate pieces inside for winter. Yoko Ono’s all-white chess set, ceramic vessels, and anything fragile get stored. But the dome? That fibreglass shell had survived everything since 1998. Its curved surfaces didn’t usually collect much snow. Except this wasn’t usual snow. This was two feet of wet, heavy snow, the worst storm since 1963.
Barratt’s trying to stay optimistic. They’re working with insurance, launching a fundraising campaign, all that. But you can hear the exhaustion. “This is the last thing that LongHouse needed,” she told me.
Fuller died in 1983, still believing his DIY dwellings would revolutionise housing. His dome at LongHouse will last longer than most architecture from the 90s. But even geodesic genius couldn’t stand up to whatever freak weather pattern just buried the East Coast.
The garden’s closed for winter anyway. Come spring, visitors will find an empty spot where the dome stood for three decades, a perfect circle of absence where Fuller’s utopian bubble once rose.
Photos: Buckminster Fuller, Fly’s Eye Dome (1997), fabricated by John Kuhtig. Photo courtesy of LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton.