Classic Popsci: The Geodesic Life
Plastic Sun Dome: April 1966 " width="525" height="650"/>Plastic Sun Dome: April 1966
When it comes to practicality, geodesic domes are a contractor's worst nightmare. Where can you get windows that conform to hexagonal panels? Where should you install the pipes? Would a chimney look out of place? In spite of all these questions, we spent a good portion of the 1970s and '80s touting geodesic structures as the next big suburban fad.
The trend began, of course, after R Buckminster Fuller received a patent for his geodesic domes in 1954. Although Fuller's idea wasn't entirely original, he is credited for formulating the structure's mathematics.
Initially commissioned by the military and by specialized companies, Fuller's geodesic domes went on to become a viable solution to the postwar housing crisis. While most families continued buying conventional houses, fans of the geodesic dome spent several decades promoting it as a super strong, easy-to-build holiday home. If a second home was to expensive, you could always pitch stylish mini domes on your lawn.
Suffice to say, the outdoor sun dome was a far simpler project than the numerous DIY geodesic houses advertised on our pages. The plastic structure reflected the dome house's properties on a small and manageable scale: it was strong, it was easily assembled, and its interior was always well-insulated. On sunny days, the inside of the plastic dome was reportedly 5 to 7 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, meaning that you could feasibly use it as a weather shield for year-round swimming.
Likewise, the geodesic home promised to cut people's electric bills at least 30 per cent. Despite their inconvenient shape, geodesic domes require the least amount of surface area for any given interior volume. The inside of a geodesic home is not only spacious, but it distributes coolness and heat more effectively than a rectangular house. Because of the dome's superior insulation, families who purchased these houses claimed energy savings of up to 50 per cent.
So why did geodesic homes fail to cross into the mainstream? Simply put, the novelty of their construction couldn't justify the work it took to get past code requirements and challenges with interior design. Tradition is not easily overridden. Building materials cater to rectangular structures, not rounded ones, and worst of all domes tend to leak between the seams during rainstorms.
While geodesic dome homes might have fallen short of our expectations, they remain an iconic symbol of the future that never was.