The United States Pavilion at Expo '67: Creative America (Quebec, R. Buckminster Fuller)

This dissertation presents the history of how the United States Pavilion at Expo '67, the Canadian Universal and International Exhibition in Montreal, came into existence. This study explores the importance of the United States Information Agency's commissioning of Richard Buckminster Fuller as the architect and Cambridge Seven as the exhibit designer for the pavilion. The methodological approach concentrates on placing the project in a cultural as well as a political context. Prior to this research, a historical investigation of the United States Pavilion and its designers had not been done. This study gives the pavilion and its designers the attention they deserve within the discipline of architectural history. Both Fuller's dome and Cambridge Seven's exhibit design for the pavilion would serve the agenda of the United States Information Agency by masking the Vietnam War as well as trying to alleviate American cold war anxieties by presenting a humane portrait of the United States as "Creative America".