![]() The exhibit has been seven decades in the making. The dome, 49 feet in diameter, will be on view through July 28. Visitors are able to watch the dome being constructed on site, strut by strut, as professors and architecture students from Catholic University alongside museum curators erect the iconic structure and answer queries from attendees. This week, a Fuller-style geodesic dome known as Weatherbreak will gradually rise 25 feet in the air in the Flag Hall of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on the National Mall. A geodesic dome has a remarkable ratio of strength to weight, which means, among other things, that it can be constructed with comparative speed-and on the cheap. He saw that the form’s mutually reinforcing geometry held promise for homes and other buildings. ![]() With a little help from his students and friends, Fuller improved the dome’s strength by drawing inspiration from structures that he found in nature, like those of snowflakes and crystals. But it was Fuller who arguably perfected the design in the late 1940s. Buckminster Fuller didn’t invent the geodesic dome-that honor goes to Walther Bauersfeld, a German engineer who in 1926 introduced a globe-shaped planetarium made of interlocking triangles that reinforced each other. ![]()
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