h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i recently caught the last day of the london design museum's exhibition on the life and work of buckminster fuller, the progenitor of the geodesic dome, among other time-saving, life-enhancing design/engineering phenomena...
what i wondered was why didn't the geodesic dome, or its successor, the fly-eye dome, ever take off?
there were hints in the exhibition about bucky going back to the drawing board, problems with mass production on various projects,
but why didn't these things just fly?
were they too outre? the montreal world fair dome was apparently a great success, the london dome, altho' criticised for its content, is a generally appreciated structure (rogers seems to have collaborated with fuller towards the end of fuller's life)
does anyone, architect, designer, engineer, social policist or whatever, know what happened?

I visited the Eden project in Cornwall a couple of weeks ago. This is a project to build several giant greenhouses out of geodesic domes. I'll see if I can track down any web info.

This post has been removed.

ah, of course, thanks for that
i had forgotten about eden
but, more generally, why do you think g-domes haven't taken off as a cheap housing option?

Conservatism and practicality.

I would prefer a house with vertical walls and flat ceilings to a dome. Some of my furniture is 5' or 6' high. And domes look like a 1950s view of the future.

Did you know that there are only 3 forms of pure carbon? Graphite, Diamonds and Buckmaster Fullerine. I cannot remember how many carbon atoms go to make up each different kind of carbon. Buckmaster Fullerine - known to its scientific pals as Bucky Balls - is soot, or so I've been told. It takes the form of a perfect geodesic sphere - hence the name.

This post has been removed.

Back to Eden - remember 1 dome in London 100s of millions of lottery money- life time, well less than a year really. 8 Domes in Cornwall, £37 Million of lottery money, life time, decades, and over 200,000 visitors to, lets be honest, a building site, already. Says something about the London centric approach to spending.

Cornwall 8, London 1, even after extra time and money.

CH

That one in London's a tent, not a dome!

Even more reason for spending al that cash. NOT. Sorry o rant a bit, but Tim Smit, the guy behind Heligan and Eden is after another £7million to extend Eden. When we hear the Dome is given another £47Million just to keep it open for 6 months, us in the South West get a tad anoyed.

Yours, flying the black and white flag,

CH

Actually because of the stability of those bucky balls, a material called quasam that is made of them, is harder than diamond.

but is it as shiny... does it last for ever... is it a girl's best friend?

It probably last as much forever as diamonds does. But it is probably harder to make a song about it being a girls best friend. But it´s only good if it can be used for practical purposes instead of being hogged by jewelers.

In a wander amounst my old threads I saw I had writen something in this one and completely forgotten I had.

I the mean time h2g2 . com has ceased to be and the URL to the Eden project mentioned above has been removed (don't know why an entire post has as well) But also I have writen and have had edit an entry on the geodesic domes at Eden and it can be found here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A545447

ChawkE