Geodesic Dome for 99
IN THE PROCESS OF BEING DOCUMENTED.
What's the Deal with Domes?
Geodesic domes have always occupied a special place in the heart of MIT, and of the Media Lab in particular. They are deeply solar punk in their modular archiecture and utopian ideals. Inspired by Jake, Sara and Agnes' dodecadome from a previous 99F, we decided to build a new one for the first outdoors 99F. Because the dome would be outside, we decided to go bigger in size.
Designing the Dome

The dome was designed for robustness. We did some beam analysis to determine critical nodal loads that the dome would be submitted when assembled. As it was such a large structure, the own structure would need to be eventual scafolding supporting structures for the top nodes. The loads were multiplied with a factor of safety of 4 and the result was that the structure really didnt care about those loads. The overal safety factor was over 41.

Most geodesic domes are designed to have a flat base by using a perfect hemisphere. This one was designed to have an additional layer of triangles below the halfway point, giving it a more upright form.

The final design was a 2V dome, 3.1 meters tall and 4.3 meters in diameter.
Fabricating the Dome
We cut the hub components on the Fab Light.

and folded them (18 degrees!) on the handbrake.
Then we cut the 2x4's down to size, and pre-drilled them with a 3D printed component.


Assembling the Dome
Assembly took around 7 hours, with 3-5 people working on it continuously.
Partying in the Dome
The 99F Party explored themes of hope, renewal and integration with nature.