After several decades kept in the warehouses of the Smithsonian, one of the most significant cultural institutions in the United States, the more than a thousand pieces that made up the first great North America Portable Geodesic Dome have come together again this week in a museum in Washington D.C. to talk about how the world will have to adapt to the climate change.
“At a time in history when we are faced with extreme weather events due to the climate changethere are very few structures that can withstand extreme weather forces such as category four and five hurricanes,” Abeer Saha, curator of the exhibition, told Efe.
a geodesic dome It is a hemispherical construction generated with the union of polyhedrons. As a housing solution, it has a high seismic resistance, can withstand a very high snow load, is very stable in the face of strong winds, and requires fewer materials in its construction.
For three days, a group of students from the Catholic University of America have been rebuilding this structure, originally created in the 1950s and which can be seen until the end of the month at the National Museum of American History in the “Reconstruction of ‘Weatherbreak'” exhibition. : geodesic domes in an era of extreme weather”.
This exhibition, explains Saha, seeks for the public to experience “what it feels like inside a geodesic structure” because “they could find themselves living in one over the course of the next 20 to 30 years, as the climate becomes more and more extreme.”
“He climate change it’s a reality and we really want the public to go in and think about what their life will be like in this changing climate.”
In recent years the domes They have become popular above all as tourist accommodation and numerous projects have also emerged to use them as ecological housing. Its use in emergency situations is not yet widespread, but according to experts it could be an efficient solution in risk areas.
They can be used as disaster-resistant housing, as shelters that house large numbers of people, and also as temporary, quick-to-build housing solutions after disasters. In the Bahamas, for example, dozens of domes were built after the passage of Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
The geodesic dome reconstructed in this museum in the American capital was created by the architect Jeffrey Lindsay, who was inspired by the theories of the inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller.
It was first built in the winter of 1950 in Montreal, Canada, and was designed to withstand snow and winds of up to 200 miles per hour.
It was later rebuilt in the early 1960s in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles as a mid-century modern home for architect Bernard Judge and lived in for about two years. Shortly after it was donated to the smithsonian and has been stored until now.
It has a height of 25 feet (7.62 meters) and a width of 49 feet (14.9 meters) and is made up of more than 1,000 pieces of aluminum, Tonya Ohnstad, assistant professor of architecture at the Catholic University, explained to Efe.
Although the assembly has taken three days, the entire project has lasted two years since, among other difficulties, there was no “instruction book”, the pieces “were not labeled” and “several were missing”. “It’s been like putting together a puzzle,” he says.
With this, the students have not only faced the field work of building something by themselves, but they have also learned about the need to create “responses” to face “the climate changeOhnstad says.
The American company Pacific Domes has been manufacturing and marketing domes for four decades and emergency domes are one of their specialties, they state on their website.
“They adapt to all types of terrain, are completely deployable and can be erected in hours with a few tools,” they explain about these structures.
Among other advantages, they emphasize, they are “the most efficient aerodynamic human shelter that can be found” because “ambient air and energy circulate without obstacles, which allows heating and cooling to occur naturally.”
These structures, the company emphasizes, are “perfect for many relief functions” and also “can be easily transported to the place where a disaster occurs and can be removed just as easily when they are no longer needed.”
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