The first time young Michael Chesler saw the geodesic dome along state Route 87, he thought it looked like a UFO had landed in the middle of Geauga County.
“As soon as I saw this as a little boy, I was obsessed and overwhelmed,” says Chesler, now president of the Cleveland-based historic property developers and restoration contractors The Chesler Group. “It changed me.”
Chesler’s fascination with the dome, which dates back to country drives with his father, led him to approach ASM International in 2009 to offer to renovate the facility.
The aluminum geodesic dome, designed by Buckminster Fuller and the world’s largest open-air dome at 250 feet in diameter, needed no restoration. But the building, designed by Cleveland architect John Terence Kelly and opened in 1959, needed a complete overhaul. Previous renovations had covered up critical elements of Kelly’s design.
ASM International, formerly American Society for Metals, held a celebration in August to show off the $7 million project. There, state Sen. Tim Grendell summed up the feeling one gets standing under the dome, surrounded by gardens and woods.
“You stand tonight at the intersection of nature’s beauty and man’s ingenuity,” Grendell said.
Here are five of our favorite elements of the makeover. — Heide Aungst
Metals: The building used metal details throughout to celebrate ASM’s mission. The renovation restored several such details, including stainless steel doors and floating staircases, brass handrails and copper walls.
Roof: Michael Chesler says he’s most proud of the total renovation of the roof over the Café Commons, including a 400-foot radial arch concrete wall and green vegetative roof with soil and grass. “It was always a green roof, but it leaked the day after they built this building,” Chesler says. “So I’m making sure it’ll never leak again.”
Windows: The single-pane glass windows couldn’t be replaced because of the National Register of Historic Places designation. So each window was carefully removed and cleaned. External shades that blocked light were restored and moved inside so employees can raise them to let light in.
Interior: Dimit Architects of Lakewood created a new, brighter ambience inside the 50,000-square-foot office building but meticulously read through Kelly’s original papers to keep true to his initial mission. They found carpeting with a circular pattern to fit the building design. New furniture and lighting also matched the building’s unusual geometry. Some existing furniture designed by Kelly, such as a conference table with stainless steel inlays, was restored.
Seven Murals on The History of Iron: During the renovation, the daughter of Greek-born artist Nikos Bel-Jon called ASM International managing director Stan Theobald to ask about her late father’s murals. Theobald was stunned. “I had no idea what she was talking about,” he says. He hunted for them and found them on a warehouse storage shelf, wrapped together in brown paper. The murals had been forgotten because the managing director who commissioned them had died a year before the building opened. The murals, etched in metal with steel wool, pick up light to show details. They’re now hung — for the first time — throughout the headquarters building. Two are prominently displayed in the entranceway.