Standing On The 90th Meridian

Buckminster Fuller was a visiting professor at SIU-Edwardsville when he designed the domed structure for the campus Religious Center, now renamed the Center for Spirituality & Sustainability. The placement of the geodesic dome is symmetrically astride the true planet Earth's "90th" western meridian of longitude. In 1971 during his address at the building dedication Fuller described the dome as “a miniature Earth, a true planetarium". He stated that one goes inside the dome as if into the symbolic center of the earth “to go outside one’s self, thence outward to the stars.”