John Prenis

Author and editor; published with Running Press from the early 1970s through 1990.

John Prenis is the author of The Dome Builder's Handbook (1973), one of the earliest titles from Running Press and a key document of the counterculture dome-building movement. The book is a loose collection of unedited, newsletter-like entries mailed in by owner-builders — mostly from Northern California, Washington, and Oregon — who described their own domes down to frequencies, footings, and material costs. Little is documented about Prenis himself; it was his first book, and he went on to write several more for the same publisher through 1990.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: influenced-by-fuller. Prenis's The Dome Builder's Handbook belongs squarely to the 1960s-70s wave of anti-establishment design writing that carried R. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome from theory into the hands of amateur builders. The handbook appeared in 1973 alongside Lloyd Kahn's best-selling Domebook, at a moment when domes were still seen as an ambitious but solvable form of alternative shelter. Fuller is present throughout the surrounding literature of the movement as the intellectual source whose geodesic geometry the back-to-the-land builders were adapting. Prenis's contribution was to create a practical, grassroots manual that translated Fuller's structural ideas into accessible DIY instructions.

See Also

• The Dome Builder's Handbook — the DIY dome guide he authored
• Lloyd Kahn — Domebook author whose work paralleled this one
• Steve Baer — fellow counterculture dome and solar experimenter

Sources

• The Dome Builder's Handbook — compiled topic page for the book