Geodesic domes have been with us for over fifty years but are still hardly common.  Partly or fully spherical, they consist of a shell of great circles which rest upon the top of a sphere.  Here are some of the more famous on the planet.

The Montreal Biosphere

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The World Fair of 1967 was a fair old time ago but one extreme example of recycling old buildings is the Montreal Biosphere which is now the home of an environmental museum.  The original acrylic shells that enclosed the dome are now gone – the steel remains however.  At the time of the World Fair the building housed the longest ever escalator (thirty seven meters in length).  Unfortunately a 1976 fire destroyed the acrylic shells but the building was bought by Environment Canada in 1980 and it is now an interactive museum.  One of the highlights of a visit to Montreal, the museum is devoted to showing people about how the Great Lakes ecosystem can be developed in a sustainable way – this is done through a variety of exhibitions and interactive pieces.

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The Eden Project

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Welcome to the largest Greenhouse in the world.  If Swine Flu kills ninety nine percent of us this winter then the survivors could do far worse than to head down to this set of artificial biomes in which the ecosystems of the world are recreated.  Each dome is constructed from a few pentagons plus hundreds of hexagons that connect the whole structure together.  Opened to the public in 2001 this has all the elements of a classic geodesic dome.  This is a partly spherical structure that has a network of large circles (known as geodesics) which lie on a sphere.  The geodesics form elements in the shape of triangles that have great rigidity and also make sure that stress is distributed evenly across the whole structure.