Penang's geodesic dome

The founding fathers of modern Penang had a great sense of humour. Yes, indeed. In their quest to keep Penang in the forefront of development in Malaysia during the early 1970s, the former Chief Minister Dr Lim Chong Ee, and his architect brother, Lim Chong Keat, conceived the building of the Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak or KOMTAR in downtown George Town.

KOMTAR was meant to cover about 11 hectares of land with development carried out in stages. The pride of KOMTAR was the 65-storey Tower which caught fire during construction and was a sight to behold. Far away, especially from the mainland, it looked like a harmless bunsen burner but to the residents living around the structure, it was terrifying.

For a very short while, the KOMTAR Tower was the tallest building in Asia until it was surpassed by a building in South Korea. But never mind...it was still the tallest building in Malaysia until those pesky people at Maybank decided to build their Menara Maybank in Kuala Lumpur. Serves them right that the Petronas Twin Tower eventually overtook their pride.

But as I said, the two Lims had a great sense of humour. Not only did they want a tower at Komtar, they were equally inspired by Buckminster Fuller to build a geodesic dome beneath the tower.

Buckminster Fuller was a visionary and certainly an environmentalist. He dedicated his whole life to asking this question: "Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?" He died in 1983 at age 87 with this question still unanswered. Story has it that his wife was comatose in hospital and dying of cancer and while visiting her he suddenly exclaimed: "She is squeezing my hand!" He then stood up, suffered a heart attack and died an hour later. His wife died 36 hours later. Read about it here, as written by his daughter, Allegra Fuller Snyder.

Do you know what is a geodesic dome? It's a structure that looks like triangular pieces joined up into a giant golfball. It's reputedly the strongest man-made structure without any internal beams. Paradoxically, the bigger the geodesic dome, the stronger the structure is.

So where's the humour? Can you imagine a tower jutting straight up into the sky and a geodesic dome at its base? If KOMTAR's Tower-cum-Dome is not the world's largest phallic symbol, I don't know what is. Was it intentional or (pardon the pun) was it conceived by accident?

I've been searching through my photographs but unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a decent picture to show you. Here is what I have, below:


If you need a clearer picture of the dome, here's a picture stolen from Webshots: