Gene and Jo Ann Bernofsky and Clark Richet, University of Kansas graduates founded a settlement in Colorado known as ‘Drop City.’ Drop City and its inhabitants, ‘Droppers’, became a space for artists, inventors, and free thinkers who wished to celebrate and practice experimental ways of living, free from the conformities of mainstream life.


The Droppers built dwellings inspired by the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, in particular his advocacy of geodeisic domes. The domes were improvised, using salvaged materials including car parts, waste ply and reclaimed timber.  The Drop City domes deviated from Fuller’s precise architectural vision, acting as kind of free-form mutation of his ideals.


Reflecting upon and practically exploring the Dropper’s approach to shelter building formed the starting point for the project and ‘Droppers’. Ray & Webster produced a large scale dome replicating and reenacting many of the processes used to build the original structures. These processes became a platform to reflect on the Droppers approach to life and art, to consider how this might be relevant today or what might be the contemporary embodiment of this? The dome structure produced a space for discussions, workshops, discos, film screenings, and to house a library and jukebox, each aspect contributing to ongoing questions about counter culture, psychedelic consciousness and its relation to the contemporary context.


Droppers was shown at the Old School Room Project Space, Somerset, UK, as part of the OSR Projects Lobster Trap Commission 2016.