Geodesic domes have been celebrated for their exceptional strength-to-weight ratio and dismissed for their impracticalities. Does this space-age structure have a use in the present day?
Nestled in a claypit carved from the gentle green hills of the United Kingdom’s far south-west lies a cluster of bulbous, semi-translucent structures, standing between 35-55 m high.
This is the Eden Project, an ambitious tourist attraction completed in 2000 amid the new millennium’s spirit of sci-fi optimism, and which, in its inter-linked ethylene tetrafluroethylene co-polymer bubbles, encases eight distinct, climate-controlled biomes.
But if ever the structure’s aesthetic elegance might be in doubt – it appears both essential to the surrounding landscape and utterly alien to it, like a sheet of enormous bubble wrap draped over the countryside – its engineering has an elegance all of its own.
An exercise in efficiency
“Designing the biomes was an exercise in efficiency, both of space and material,” noted Grimshaw, the architectural firm responsible for the project.
“Structurally, each dome is a hex-tri-hex space frame reliant on two layers. The efficiency of the frame relies on the components of the geometric shapes: steel tubes and joints that are light, relatively small and easily transportable.”
This material efficiency and the distinct retro-futurism of the complex’s construction are not coincidental. The Eden Project’s biomes are based on the 1950s-era creations of Richard Buckminster Fuller, a charismatic American inventor who was part huckster and part visionary.
Fuller patented the structures that he named “geodesic domes” in 1954, though unbeknownst to him, at least one had been built as part of a planetarium in the German city of Jena, three decades earlier by Carl Zeiss AG chief engineer Walter Bauersfeld.
“It’s a very efficient structure and it lends itself particularly well to lateral loading and seismic loading because of how the dome behaves,” said Dr Lisa Ottenhaus, Senior Lecturer in the University of Queensland School of Civil Engineering.
“Depending on the frequency, which is the amount of triangulation that you subject the dome to, you can get different shapes and different diameters.”
Fuller developed the design after working for decades on a proposal for modular housing that would be cheap, easy, and quick to construct.
“The sphere uses the ‘doing more with less’ principle, in that it encloses the largest volume of interior space with the least amount of surface area, thus saving on materials and cost,” the Buckminster Fuller Institute said.
And due to their structural efficiencies, geodesic domes withstand disasters such as storms or earthquakes.
“The form factor lends itself to resisting lateral loads,” Ottenhaus said. “They have a low centre of gravity and there’s not a lot of surface area for wind forces.”
Ottenhaus has their own experience with geodesic domes; as a master’s student at the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology, they used the structures to explore bamboo as a sustainable building material.
After all, bamboo can be cut without killing the plant and it grows quickly, enabling it to be harvested every three to five years.
“The tensile strength of a bamboo fibre is that of mild steel,” Ottenhaus said. “I thought, why not just use it the way it is? This is the perfect rectangular hollow section.”
But building a geodesic dome from bamboo was trickier than it first appeared. The joint details, for instance, proved complicated.
“How do you transfer a tensile load into a material that splits very easily?”
Hot and cold
The broader population resisted Fuller’s domes, which tended to be leaky and difficult to furnish or partition.
“You need to think about building physics,” Ottenhaus said. “How are you going to insulate this thing? How do you not cook in Queensland? How do you not freeze in Tasmania?
“It gets horrendously expensive once you start to put all these triangles on the outside to try and make it weatherproof.”
The geodesic dome did see minor application in housing, as Fuller intended, but many designers of much grander monuments embraced the ultra-modern aesthetic.
“The world of tomorrow is here today,” wrote Ada Louise Huxtable, The New York Times’s estimable architecture critic after viewing a display at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959.
Canada’s Expo 67 featured a vast Fuller-designed globe now named the Montreal Biosphère, while Disney theme park Epcot used the principles in its spherical Spaceship Earth building.
Yesterday and tomorrow
As the world moved on from the tech-optimism of the mid-century, the geodesic dome began to look like a dated symbol of a bygone age.
Nevertheless, they haven’t vanished entirely in the 21st century. The Eden Project welcomes millions of visitors each year and hosts concerts during the summer.
Domes are popular with amateur enthusiasts and hobbyists, too.
“There’s definitely that novelty aspect of having a spherical dome in your backyard,” Ottenhaus said. “People love these simple systems. That’s why people put a yurt in their backyard – because they can put it up themselves.”
And, at the other end of the scale, their structural grandeur retains its appeal. Melbourne’s AAMI Park, completed in 2010, features a roof consisting of a series of interlocking geodesic domes with a facade of triangular panels. Meanwhile, in downtown Seattle stands the Amazon Spheres, three giant glass balls that opened in 2018 and host workspaces for the tech giant’s employees.
“If you need a dome, it’s a great structural system, but there are very few structural applications where you need a dome,” Ottenhaus said.
“There are some sporting arenas where a geodesic dome might be appropriate, though you’re losing a lot of space at the edges. Maybe some observatories and military structures.”
Ultimately, Ottenhaus sees the value on a case-by-case basis.
“It’s a great structural system and, if it is fit for purpose, then by all means, people should embrace it,” they said. “We can engineer whatever we like, but it’s not always the sensible thing to do.”
For more innovative approaches to construction, check out the finalists for the Australian Construction Achievement Award, which will be announced on 6 August.
The only people who ever called him a huckster were those tied to the fossil fuel industry, which Buckminster Fuller called upon us to wean ourselves off as early as 1930. There is much more about this great genius that you and others apparently know little of, but since Steve Jobs called him “the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century” maybe you should read up. Here’s the funny book I wrote about Bucky’s lost wisdom and what it could still mean for humanity. bit.ly/buckylove
This article prompted fond memories of visiting Eden shortly after it opened- it was an amazing structure and at that time quite sparsely planted as the new environment developed. I was then very fortunate to visit once again in 2005 shortly before I emigrated to Australia, the flora had blossomed and filled the domes beyond my initial vision, it had developed into an amazing place and there it nestled in my memory