Dome-life: The curious cultures of geodesic domes

Geodesic domes are cultural and architectural icons whose popularity shows no sign of diminishing. Brought to the attention of the world by pioneering American polymath Buckminster Fuller their light, versatile, hyper-efficient, mesmeric structures have come to symbolise liberation in various forms. On the one hand they have become totemic of a form of ecological modernism, deeply connected to the idea that technology will one day save us. But on another, they have become emblems of a quieter counter-cultural revolution; an off-grid, low impact, 'alternative' life.

A google image search gives a sense of the diversity of some of these alternative communities, which often have geodesic domes as either main living quarters or productive greenhouses. An interesting example is Drop City, pictured above, which formed in Southern Colorado in 1965 as an artists' colony. But despite early successes and plaudits living without walls in a utopian cooperative democracy proved harder than the founders imagined and Drop City was eventually abandoned in the early '70s. It's now recognised as one of the first rural hippy communes and laid the foundations for people seeking this kind of escape ever since.

Biosphere 2

Another alternative, though much more expensive, commune of sorts grew in the Arizona desert some 20 years after Drop City and we're fortunate to be hosting one of its original inhabitants, Mark Nelson, at Eden in September. Biosphere 2 was a daring, radical project when it burst onto the ecological scene and in its current life as a research facility of the University of Arizona it still is. Biosphere 2 is a 3.5 acre closed ecosystem, perhaps “the most tightly sealed building of all time” according to Nelson, nestled in the desert outside Tucson. Designed as an experimental laboratory for global ecosystems it is a poster-child for bonkers, brilliant science. The architecture is audacious, eye-catching, and also practical: Geodesic domes, Aztecan pyramids, and Babylonian Barrel Vaults rise like glowing, futuristic temples from the desert dust.

Nelson was among eight ‘eco-optimists’ (a phrase I like so much I’ve made it the headline of my LinkedIn profile), as Fred Pearce puts it in his recent New Scientist article, who were chosen to be locked in the first Biosphere 2 ‘closure experiment’ between 1991 and '93.

Biosphere 2's biomes were extraordinary. Home to a rainforest, ocean, coral reef, mangrove swamp, savannah, desert, and agricultural systems the Biospherians' mission was to study the living skin, the biosphere, of our home rock while also investigating the possibility of a future escape to space.

Despite the ambition of the project and their undeniable bravery in the face of such simultaneous isolation and global scrutiny, they were accused of un-seriousness and of ‘Disneyfying’ ecology. This particular charge Nelson seems to wears as a badge of honour; “we were making ecology sexy,” he says. At the time though, they achieved fame not so much for the quality of their science, but for the failure of some of their environmental systems, oxygen levels slumped and carbon dioxide spiked for example, and like Drop City before them they experienced near fatal collapse in their community dynamics.

The allure of geodesic domes?

Perhaps the global interest in their project is because the idea of being locked in a miniature, bonsai world is so tantalising. One of the first questions I’m asked excitedly by many visitors to Eden is, “have you slept in the Rainforest Biome?” When I answer “yes” their mouths drop in mixture of admiration and awe, which although entirely undeserved goes some way to show the allure of even brief dome-based adventures. And although I’ve never asked the question I suspect for many the allure of locked-in isolation is because of a nostalgic love-affair with the 1972 sci-fi classic Silent Running, directed by Douglas Trumbull.

Silent Running is a post-apocalyptic space-based ecological-nightmare containing many familiar tropes and archetypes. The story goes that all vegetation on Earth has died so geodesic spaceship-arks are orbiting near Saturn filled with plants and a few animals that could one-day re-vegetate the planet. As a pedant it’s interesting that a culture so sophisticated it could create such monstrous space-vessels didn’t think to create discreet seed-banks instead of vast floating arks… but anyway. When the mission is cancelled and the domes are ordered to be destroyed the ‘hero’, Freeman Lowell played by Bruce Dern, revolts so he can save the forest.

Silent Running embodies a certain form of misanthropic environmentalism. Lowell lovingly cares for his plants while grudgingly tolerating his human companions, until eventually those relationships are utterly severed. To replace this human contact Lowell speaks with the trees, rabbits and birds, but even this doesn't quench his relational needs so he adopts two anthropomorphised drones, Huey and Dewey. The drones become his servants, playmates, and companions until by the heart-breaking final scenes we're left with virtually no empathy for the human cast at all.

Bucky

It's not a huge stretch to imagine the influence that Buckminster Fuller, or Bucky as he's known, had on Douglas Trumbull. It was Bucky, a trans-disciplinary genius who was kicked out of Harvard twice, who popularised, systematised, and subsequently patented this building model that is now found around the world.

One of the more famous of these projects was Missouri Botanic Garden’s extraordinary Climatron, pictured above, which Trumbull is said to have modeled Silent Running's domes on.

To Bucky the architectural style he championed wasn’t merely an aesthetic preference and it did more than address usual practical or technical building challenges. These forms, mirroring fractal principles of universal geometry, were consciously chosen as a mediating force to connect us with nature and each other.

What this means is that in these spaces we are driven to ponder not only the beauty of the buildings and the geometry and infinity of the cosmos, but the very architecture of our beliefs, systems and societies. Something surely not lost on the Biospherians as they wrestled with the fault-lines in their own small community…

Domes in pop-culture

One weird offshoot of Biosphere 2 was it spawned a new pop-culture around closed ecosystems. Soon after Nelson and co emerged from Biosphere 2 the film Bio-Dome (1996) was released, starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin in a Biosphere 2-esque, minus the geodesics, experiment in Arizona. I say ‘starring’ loosely as Bio-Dome has the peculiar infamy of being one of the lowest rated films of all time, achieving a whopping 5% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If you watch the trailer embedded in the article you might understand why.

Despite this, its coming-of-enlightenment tale of two stoners getting accidentally locked in the facility with the crew of scientists has become a cult classic and a go to cultural reference point for anyone old enough and perhaps, once-upon-a-time, stoned enough (Bio-Dome is also noteworthy as the first major appearance of Jack Black and Kyle Gass as Tenacious D). Theirs, just as Biosphere’s and Eden’s, is a story arc of eco-vandalism, heightened consciousness, and subsequent redemption. In Bio-Dome Shore and Baldwin (Bud and Doyle) throw a huge party that trashes the life-support systems and they spend the rest of the film trying to restore balance to the world. One mildly annoying hangover that might be attributed to Bio-Dome is how often the Eden 'Biomes' are referred to as 'bio-domes' by people who really should know better.

Incidentally, Eden Project gets its name, according to one of Eden's pioneers Tony Kendle, because it is referencing our eviction from paradise. Named after the Garden of Eden, it wasn’t God that threw us out; our ecological impoverishment and separation is entirely our own doing - we evicted ourselves. Viewed in this light Eden Project becomes an attempt to reverse this separation. I'd also argue Drop City, Biosphere, and Bio-Dome were all doing the same; these island ecosystems then have the ability to be powerful allegory.

Biosphere 2 was also inspiration for a PC game from 1999, Biosys. I’ve never played it, nor had I heard of it until researching this article my long-term Eden colleague Jo Elworthy told me, “I helped on that”. Sure enough she gets a credit under ‘ecological research’ in her previous name Readman.

In Biosys the protagonist Professor Alan Russell wakes up in what he assumes to be a rainforest, but is actually a multi-domed facility, Biosphere 4, which he has to keep alive. I’ll try and play it at some point, but if you have, let me know how it was below the line. 

Inside Eden

Even 17 years after opening people still mistake Eden for a closed ecosystem, so much so that I once strolled into the Rainforest Biome with a professor from a large London university who turned to me and asked, “so how do you keep the environment sealed?” It might not have been such a daft question if we hadn’t just passed through the automatic sliding doors with about 5,000 other people…

I’ve also fielded many emails from researchers, normally 'inter-disciplinary post-modern contructivists' or some such stating things like, “I’m researching closed ecosystems and I’d like to study the Eden Project”. After my experience with the professor I’m never sure whether I should give them the benefit of the doubt or correct them. I tend to do neither.

The contemporary impact and influence of geodesic domes shows no signs of slowing. New projects are bursting into life all over the place, but perhaps the most exciting to me are 'The Spheres' - components of Amazon's new HQ (pictured) in Seattle that opened in January, 2018. Remind you of anything?

I’ll stop writing here, though it feels like there’s probably a book in here about all this stuff. We're absolutely thrilled to be hosting Mark Nelson here at Eden on September 13th. Tickets for this special event are available here and his new book, Pushing our Limits is out now. 

Image sources:

Biosphere 2, Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com

Drop City, Wikimedia Commons

Biosphere 2, Wikimedia Commons

Silent Running movie poster, IMBD

Climatron, Wikimedia Commons

Buckminster Fuller, Buckminster Fuller Institute/Facebook

Amazon 'The Spheres', TheVerge.com