Steve Baer — 2nd printing
published by cookbook fund - Lama Foundation
Holly Baer, secretary — Box 422, Corrales N.M. 87048
Copyright © Steve Baer, all rights reserved
Price: $1.00
Source file: 1968-01-01-dome-cookbook-baer.pdf (44 pages, image scan)
Also published by the same fund: FLOW SHOT 1 (confirmed published, not in archive) and SOL SHOT 1 (confirmed published; poster in possession, pending ingest). If "Sol" = solar, Sol Shot 1 would be Baer's earliest solar publication — predating the 1973 Tribal Messenger serialization by ~5 years and Sunspots (1975) by ~7 years.
The book is not a single linear text — it is a collage:
The book begins with a philosophical statement on language and geometry. The "today's terrifying man made world" passage is here in full context:
I am the boss of these words, take complete responsibility for what they do. The great invention, language. I take it without letting it take me. I stay ahead of it because I know that it is like a trailer and will jack knife if you let it lead. It's a human product for me to use, for you to use. I am an inventor and I start this way as an homage to our greatest invention, language. No contracts to sign, no electrical or mechanical breakdowns, no cornering of parts... The most beautiful of inventions, an invention of such an order that today I know it isn't so that we are only some debris in front of a bulldozer blade on our way out. We invented language, we can improve today's terrifying man made world.
The "cube" as threat: "Is the cube as they say 'dead' or is it instead another type of life form that with its characteristic rectilinear grid is slowly taking over the planet like some kind of galactic impetigo?"
The escape: "These are instructions on how to almost break out of prison. The prison is the paucity of shapes to which we have in the past confined ourselves because of our technology-industry-education-economy... so that we find ourselves back with the man who works with branches, reeds and mud."
The book introduces Baer's geometric vocabulary before the 3D work:
"The first man to work with zonahedra was the Russian crystallographer Federov. He never realized that zonahedra could be defined with the simple definition at the start of this page... More recently zonahedra have been investigated by P. Donchian who predicted that they were 3D projections of four-dimensional figures — this has now been proved. I first read of zonahedra in H.S.M. Coxeter's excellent book REGULAR POLYTOPES and in his contribution to W.W. Rouse Ball's book MATHEMATICAL RECREATIONS & ESSAYS."
Page 24 contains the origin story, handwritten:
THE WORD ZOME.
Steve & Durkee invented this word. We were talking about these structures and agreed that they really were not domes because they are not symmetrical. Stretching the zones of a zonahedra makes it asymmetrical. Durkee said "they are zones." I was very excited by this word — it sounds right. The word doesn't change any buildings but I kept waking up that night with the word going through my head. The next day at work Durkee and I kept saying things like — "well almost time to go zome." I have also seen it as a protection. People kept calling these buildings geodesic domes and Fuller type domes. They aren't. But I have sometimes been shy about using the word because it sounds to myself as if I were advertising something. It may be that inventing the word is more important to something's use than the form itself.
"Durkee" is almost certainly Steve Durkee (later Brother William), a counterculture artist associated with New Buffalo commune and the Lama Foundation.
December 1964, Zurich: Holly Baer made a rhombus-icoso-dodecahedron on the attic floor of her grandmother's house in Switzerland. This is the earliest documented date for Baer's zonohedra research — 3+ years before Drop City (1968).
"I first got interested in the geometric solids... when Holly made a rhombus-icoso-dodecahedron while we were living in Zurich. I started to play with them. In December 64 Connie [?] was thinking then... looking for figures in the spring of 65 in Albuquerque... I started and yet [Regular] Polytopes still fit it together."
Spring 1965, Albuquerque: Baer already working on zonohedra geometry in Albuquerque, before Drop City was founded.
Switzerland (date uncertain): Baer and daughter Audrey blew soap bubbles together on the grandmother's attic floor, studying how agglomerations of bubbles adjust to different forces. Reference: Soap Bubbles by C.V. Boys (Dover Press). Note: "this man also built a solar powered water pump on the Nile at the end of the last century."
Saturday, April 1966: Baer's first visit to Drop City. Handwritten journal entry:
"Visit Drop City. Forms, rebar mesh all in place to pour slab. Got my first dome — science fiction. Got high reading on top of the tallest building in Albuquerque — then up to one of these huge things [concrete slabs] under construction..."
"Clark, Gene, Jo Ann, Richard. More than anything I was stunned by Drop City, who were these people?"
"Seeing Drop City specially the mistakes and weak materials gave me great confidence."
Monday after the visit: "Raven and Charles Allee and I poured the slab."
October 1966: "Kitchen complex" construction note at Manera Nueva.
The main innovation of Drop City/Manera Nueva dome construction:
"Car tops are a good building material. They are cheap, strong, have an excellent paint job and are available almost everywhere."
Car tops are compound curves — curved two ways at once like a sphere. Technique: measure sides along the curves; when cut and bent at sheet metal brake, measured distances straighten out into plane triangles. Patterns made of strips of flexible ¼" plywood. Best cutting: pneumatic chisel with top still anchored to car.
Connecting: drill holes in flanges, bolt with ¼" bolts. "I still haven't tried welding the panels together."
Zome made only with car tops: photograph shows "stretched enneacontahedron" — a 90-face zonahedron — made entirely of car top panels.
Manera Nueva, Placitas, N.M. (four-dome cluster of "garnet domes"):
Llama (Lama Foundation) zome:
Drop City kitchen complex:
University of New Mexico: joined panels with angle iron hinges in "pinwheel" arrangement; flat faces pointing counterclockwise around panels from outside; sacred line through hinge hole centers
Manera Nueva joints: hierachy of faces — squares dominate rectangles, rectangles dominate diamonds. "The structure is exploded rhombic dodecahedra." Edge member angles: triangles 60°/60°; rectangles 54°44'/70°32'; squares 90°/90°.
UNM angle iron specifications: 1¾" × 1¾" × ⅛"; 3/8" hinge bolt holes drilled .083' (1 inch) from edge; leading face placed .600' back from sacred line intersection.
Signed: Steve Baer, P.O. Box 422, Corrales New Mexico
Key passages:
"This summer Dave & Bill Karuschke are working with the Dibre Community in Colorado building some clusters of zomes. Berry Hickman is planning a 26' dome built with only one kind of panel and one size dihedral angle at Manera Nueva. Ed Heinz is working on new designs at Drop City. Nancy Brickey and some other people are planning to build a geodesic dome..."
"I am working on heating and cooling systems — so far without much luck."
"I hope this Fall to teach a class at U.N.M. in which we build a structure and experiment with solar heating."
This is the archive's earliest mention of Baer working on heating and cooling systems. Berry Hickman and Ed Heinz — both later Zomeworks co-founders — appear here as active collaborators before Zomeworks existed.
Extended handwritten commentary:
"I sent Fuller a letter about his [geodesic] kinds of Geodesic domes built in Germany in 1922... he didn't answer my letter."
"I bought Fuller's untitled Epic Poem on industrialization in London out 1963. I had never heard of Fuller and didn't know what the strange looking structure was on the cover. I believe this is the best book Fuller has written. I have read it many times... I felt as if my mind were learning to swim."
"But what's all this. Omni Directional Halo crap — I can't understand it. Or why does he call it 'Fuller Synergetic Treatment' — why not a geometric transformation without his name in it?" [margin note: "sounds like a hair oil"]
"In the book 20th Century Engineering there is a picture of a planetarium built in Germany in 1922 — it has the form of a multi frequency geodesic dome, who invented this form? I don't believe it was Buckminster Fuller."
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Holly Baer | Secretary of cookbook fund; made first rhombus-icoso-dodecahedron model (Zurich, Dec 1964) |
| Audrey Baer | Daughter; blew soap bubbles with Baer in Switzerland |
| Durkee (Steve Durkee?) | Co-invented the word "zome" |
| Clark (Richert) | Drop City founder named in April 1966 journal entry |
| Gene (Bernofsky) | Drop City co-founder |
| Jo Ann (Bernofsky) | Drop City co-founder |
| Richard | Named at Drop City (unclear who) |
| Raven | "Charles Allee and I poured the slab" (Monday after April 66 visit) |
| Charles Allee | Poured slab with Baer and Raven |
| Mandel Bell | Rented air compressor with Baer; cut car tops with pneumatic chisel |
| Dave Park | General Salvage, Albuquerque — ~1000 car tops stockpiled |
| Larry Lard | Made first wobbly car-top dome rock solid with sheet metal screws |
| Albert Maher | Helped install the second-to-last panel in a dramatic construction sequence |
| Berry Hickman | Discovered covering one dome stiffened neighbors; planned 26' dome at Manera Nueva |
| Ed Heinz | Working on new designs at Drop City |
| Dave & Bill Karuschke | Working with Dibre Community in Colorado |
| Nancy Brickey | Planning a geodesic dome |
Source: Steve Baer, Dome Cookbook, 2nd printing. Lama Foundation, Corrales NM, ~1968. 44-page image scan.
File: 1968-01-01-dome-cookbook-baer.pdf