Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College (North Carolina, 1933–1957), the legendary experimental school whose cross-disciplinary, learn-by-doing culture drew Fuller as a summer teacher in 1948 and 1949.

At Black Mountain, Fuller taught alongside Josef Albers, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, staged early geodesic-dome experiments (including the famous "failed" Supine Dome), and mentored students in his emerging geometry. It was there that Kenneth Snelson built the first tensegrity sculpture and Ruth Asawa developed her looped-wire practice. The school's rival models of experiment are the subject of Eva Díaz's study The Experimenters.

Role in Fuller's world

Black Mountain is the crucible of Fuller's teaching persona and of tensegrity's origin — the setting where his design science met the postwar art avant-garde and where several figures in his orbit first encountered his geometry.

See Also

• Kenneth Snelson (Kenneth Snelson) — student who built the first tensegrity sculpture here
• Ruth Asawa (Ruth Asawa) — student whose looped-wire work grew from this milieu
• The Experimenters (The Experimenters) — Eva Díaz's study of experiment at Black Mountain

Sources

• The Experimenters (source reference) — study of experimental method at Black Mountain College