Episode notes
The first geodesic dome was not Buckminster Fuller's. Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer at Carl Zeiss in Jena, Germany, built a lightweight triangulated dome on the factory roof after World War I to house a new planetarium projector, and a larger public version opened in July 1926 as the Wonder of Jena. Fuller, working with artist Kenneth Snelson in the late 1940s, coined the term geodesic, secured a US patent in 1954, and pitched the dome as mass-produced housing for everyone. The US Marines began testing domes in 1954: untrained Marines assembled a 30 foot magnesium dome in 135 minutes, a helicopter flew one around at 50 knots, and an anchored dome survived a full day of 120 mph propeller blast. In 1956, 21 domes went up in Canada for the Distant Early Warning Line.
For years the chord factors needed to cut the struts were closely held under Fuller's licensing, until Lloyd Kahn published the tables in Dome Book One and Dome Book Two in the early 1970s and set off a DIY and counterculture building wave. Kahn later turned against dome homes, calling them smart but not wise. Rectangular plywood created waste, custom windows cost 5 to 15 times more, fire escapes and wiring were difficult, furniture fit badly, sound carried across the curved ceiling, and the many seams leaked. Domes instead found their place in big spans and harsh sites.
- Why rigid triangles spread loads across the whole shell, and why a sphere encloses the most volume for the least surface
- Hugh Kenner's account of chord factors guarded almost like classified information
- Designer J. Baldwin's claim that a well-built dome will never leak, versus the wet reality for DIY builders
- Spaceship Earth at Epcot, named after Fuller's own phrase, and the 210 meter Jeddah Superdome
- EcoCamp Patagonia, which opened in 2001 using domes inspired by Kawésqar dwellings, and today's 3D printed seamless domes