Synergetics, Inc.

Synergetics, Inc., the Fuller company that took the commercial dome commissions, paired with Geodesics, Inc. on the government and military side.

Fuller split his dome practice by client: Geodesics, Inc. handled government and military contracts, Synergetics, Inc. handled private industry. The firm's most visible work came through designer Thomas C. Howard, whose commissions run through the corpus of notable American domes.

Howard designed the 1958 Union Tank Car Company dome near Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the palmatron greenhouse at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, built in 1960, which went on to inspire the domes in the science-fiction film Silent Running; and the pavilion dome for the 1964 New York World's Fair, later redesigned as an aviary for the Queens Zoo in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Role in Fuller's world

Synergetics, Inc. is the commercial channel of Fuller's geometry — the firm that put geodesic structures into railroads, botanical gardens, and world's fairs rather than radar stations. Through Howard's commissions it is responsible for much of the American public's first-hand encounter with the dome.

See Also

• Geodesics, Inc. — the government and military half of Fuller's two-company structure
• Geodesic Dome — the wider history of the form these commissions built

Sources

• Fuller and the Military — the two-company split between private industry and defense contracts
• Geodesic Dome — Thomas C. Howard's Union Tank Car, Missouri Botanical Gardens, and 1964 World's Fair domes