In the company was sold and became the Solardome Industries Limited we know today. The world of dome construction however really hit the press in March with the opening of the Eden Project, Cornwall. The idea was conceived by Sir Timothy Bartel Smit, who then put a team together to make the dream a reality, including architects Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners. The Eden Project consists of several bubble-shaped domes, made of hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal inflated plastic ETFE cells, supported by steel frames.
Until that time, planetarium domes rotated while external light entered through holes on the dome shell to simulate stars and planets. This limited the practical size of the dome and the number of people it could hold. Bauersfeld's concept of interior projection would work in a much larger dome.
The first model constructed was more than half of a sphere; 52 ft 16 m in diameter. Bauersfeld solved the problem of how to construct such a large sphere by approximating it with an icosahedron sided solid with equal triangular faces and subdividing each face into smaller triangles.
He framed the triangles from nearly 3, thin iron rods. To construct a spherical shell over this framework, he erected a sphefical wooden form inside the frame and sprayed on a pasty concrete mixture.
The shell was designed to be the same proportional thickness as that of an eggshell compared to its diameter, a ratio later considered appropriate for geodesic domes. Thirty years later, R. Buckminster Fuller, an American architect, engineer, poet, and philosopher, independently invented a similar structural system. Following World War II, Fuller wanted to design affordable, efficient housing that could be built quickly from mass-produced components. Willing to look outside of conventional approaches, Fuller began to work with spherical shapes because they enclose a given space with a minimum of surface area.
He first framed spheres with a network of strips approximating great circles circles on a sphere with centers that coincide with the sphere's center ; the strips formed triangles as they crossed one another. He called the product a geodesic dome because great circles are known as geodesics from a Greek word meaning earth dividing.
Eventually, Fuller began forming spheres from hexagons and pentagons like the panels on a soccer ball and dividing them into triangles for strength and ease of construction. In , Fuller used his new system to cover the ft m diameter courtyard surrounded by Ford Motor Company's headquarters building.
He completed the design and construction in only three months. A temporary mast erected in the center of the courtyard supported the dome during construction, and the structure was incrementally raised and rotated following completion of each new section. The frame consisted of 12, aluminum struts weighing a total of 3, lb 1, kg that were connected to form triangles and then lifted into position and riveted to the growing frame.
When the dome was completed, it was gently lowered onto mounts that had been installed on the existing building. A clear fiberglass panel was installed in each triangle to complete the dome. In , Fuller received a patent on geodesic domes. During the s and s, an era in which unconventionality was prized, geometric domes became popular as an inexpensive way for environmentally conscious people to build their own homes. Instructions were widely available, but the quality of materials including such strange choices as paper mache and discarded tin cans and the skill of do-it-yourself builders were inconsistent.
Amateur-built domes tended to leak when it rained, insufficient use of insulation limited their energy efficiency, and inadequate numbers of skylights left interiors dreary. Fuller predicted that a million geodesic domes would be built by the mids, but by the early s, estimates placed the worldwide number somewhere between 50, and , A small but persistent contingent of unconventional homebuilders continue to build geodesic dome homes, primarily from kits.
However, Newsday reported in that the majority of geodesic dome structures have been built for green-houses, storage sheds, defense shelters, and tourist attractions. One of the most recognizable of these is the ft m diameter sphere at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center. Built of composite panels of ethylene plastic and aluminum in , the structure houses a ride called Spaceship Earth, a termed coined by Fuller himself.
Geodesic domes range in size from the ft m Poliedro de Caracas sports arena in Venezuela to temporary shelters that are 15 ft 5 m or less in diameter. Consequently, construction materials vary widely.
Simple, movable structures may be built of polyvinyl chloride PVC pipe or galvanized steel conduit frames covered with plastic sheeting or parachute canopies.
Later in , he introduced geodesic domes as homes with his first patent for a geodesic dome. He promoted geodesic domes as a symbol of freedom, highlighting its lightweight structure and ease of construction. These highlights appealed to various communities like the military, hippies, artists, environmentalists, and do-it-yourselfers.
This never happened, but governments started using dome structures such as weather stations, long-range radar stations, storage depots, and even Arctic research stations. Some domes built in the Arctic area have been surviving winters for years. Lloyd Khan building domes with his infamous Domebook I manuals. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller, in Lloyd Khan started building geodesic domes. This resulted in a job coordinating the building of 17 domes at Pacific High School, an alternative school in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Experimenting with geodesic domes made from plywood, aluminum, sprayed foam, and vinyl, children built their own domes and lived in them. Jay Baldwin built a dome covered with vinyl pillows.
When Buckminster Fuller visited the school in , he commissioned Baldwin to build a replica of the dome on his property in Maine. To those ends, Bauersfeld decided on a geodesic design.
In terms of their interior space, geodesic domes enclose the largest volume of space using the least amount of construction material. In turn, because they require so little with regards to material, they're also extremely lightweight. Finally, the geometric dimensions of the domes also lend them great strength.
The novel Jena building sparked worldwide interest in planetarium construction, and domes became more common. But in the s United States, only a guy nicknamed Bucky could've popularized something as futuristic as geodesic domes. It was Fuller who stuck these buildings with the term "geodesic," and he was awarded a U. Fuller took his dome design inspiration from nature. He marveled at the structural uniformity of things like snowflakes , seed pods, flowers and crystals and resolved that humans should emulate those simple, strong, and noticeably spherical arrangements [source: The Futurist ].
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