The Cool House: geodesic dome
Showing posts with label geodesic dome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geodesic dome. Show all posts

Thursday, September 25, 2008

More Balls!


Feeding my fascination with Buckminster Fuller and geodesic structures, we visited the Biosphere Environmental Museum in Montreal. This fun, interactive museum is built inside the dome designed by Fuller for the 1967 World Expo. The original structure was protected from the elements by a transparent acrylic membrane that was destroyed when the sphere caught fire in 1976. Now the dome is completely uncovered, which is great for viewing the surrounding landscape and watching the these guys perform a little maintenance.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Geodesic Dome House



At the corner of two perfectly ordinary suburban streets in Eaton's Neck, Long Island between the ubiquitous ranches and two-storey homes is this geodesic house. We were taking advantage of a really beautiful day to drive out and revisit some of the properties we had seen when we were looking to buy The Coo; House four years ago. Turning down one residential street we were confronted by the dome house. It fits so well into the neighborhood that we'd actually driven past it in the other direction and not even noticed it.
The striking thing about this home, apart from the design of course, is that it is so well maintained. It looks very similar to the Fuller Dome Home in Carbondale, IL, the residence of Bucky Fuller, the architect and inventor who poularised geodesic domes, and his wife Anne. That dome is currently undergoing a major preservation effort.
Although the high point of their popularity was the 1960s and 70s, residential domes are still being made today and, as this GeoSphere video shows, are relatively simple to construct. What may be more challenging is outfitting them to meet the various state and town building codes. But given their energy-efficiency and relatively low build-cost, maybe it's time for a resurgence of this distinctive building model.