How To Get Plans for a 30 foot Dome

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Well, be of good cheer. Such plans are available. We can't print 'em but we can tell you where to get 'em: POPULAR SCIENCE. And we CAN reprint the article that introduced the plans.

Note that the construction called out here is wood strips and polyethelene. Don't let that put you off. Once you get the plans, you can substitute plywood, car tops or any suitable material of your choice.

ABOUT FULLER AND HIS DOMES

Silver-haired, 70-year-old R. Buckminster Fuller keeps his home base at Carbondale, III, where he is a professor at Southern Illinois University and lives in a plywood geodesic dome. But most of the time he is jetting about the world explaining his new design science to eager audiences.

Fuller's geodesic dome has brought him fame and fortune, but it's only one of his many inventions. One of his systems makes what he calls "tensegrity" structures. It uses discontinuous compression and continuous tension. The compression struts do not touch one another, but are held apart by a network of tension cables. It's like having a brick building in which the bricks (compression members) do not touch, but are held apart by tension members in such a manner that a stress exerted on the building is immediately distributed throughout the entire structure.

Another system, which he calls "aspension," uses the principle of the catenary cables of a suspension bridge to produce an upward-arched dome.

These strange structures had their beginning way back in 1917 when Fuller began working out a completely new branch of mathematics which he calls "energetic-synergetic" geometry. Although radical, his mathematics, when applied to structures such as the geodesic dome, is unquestionably practical. His dome is recognized by many experts as the strongest, lightest, and most efficient means of enclosing space yet devised by man.

Thousands of Fuller's domes have been built, from one of 36' diameter made entirely of paperboard to a 384'-diameter giant made of alumimum. Now several companies make prefabricated domes under license.

The U. S. Marine Corps uses geodesic-dome shelters that can be carried to the front line by helicopter, and the U.S. Weather Bureau uses a plastic dome to house instruments atop Mount Washington where 200-m.p.h. winds buffet it. Fuller has even proposed to control the climate in mid-Manhattan by putting a two-mile-diameter dome across the island. The bigger the domes, he says, the stronger they are.

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