Prefabrication experiments - 253 - Operation Breakthrough - 04 - Spun Plastic Domes

The vast majority of Operation Breakthrough proposals identified some category of modular construction to solve construction’s lagging productivity. Boxes or panels assembled into clusters of medium to high-density housing organizations would offer affordable solutions. The manufactured systems would arrive on site and simply be assembled reforming traditional construction processes. Less prominent, but equally important proposals offered unfamiliar materials, models or strategies detached form conventional prefabrication approaches. One of the more intriguing and eccentric proposals from DOW Corporation, the Spun Plastic Domes, calls to mind the singular dwelling visions associated with Buckminster Fuller’s Wichita house patented some years earlier. 

 

Dow’s polygonal dwelling unit would be assembled from vertical panel service walls that formed a lightweight but deep exterior wall. The wall’s depth included integrated built-in furniture or storage. This useful thickness circumscribed interior space in a served versus service space configuration. The segmented deep structural skin, one to two stories high, supported a half-sphere dome cap. A thin shell cupola rested on panels built from conventional wood stud framing. The dome’s composition was shaped on site. An extruded polystyrene insulating core was sprayed over a metallic framework grid attached to the fiberglass reinforced exterior shell’s intrados. The dome’s interior would then be sprayed with a decorative plastic coating to produce a harmonized interior surface. Each dome covering included a central oculus for lighting and ventilation further rendering its lineage to Fuller’s Dymaxion Unit.

 

Although the dome was the proposal’s flagship element, the envelope service pieces were the innovative idea as they argued for a multi-functional exterior wall. Designed as modular segments, the rounded plan could be individually planned, mixed and matched according to varying uses and compositions. Housing clusters included multiple configurations all articulated to a grid of service distribution points radiating in multiple directions. This service matrix was designed as a field over which the circular dwellings were moored. Anchored by earthwork and foundations to the collective infrastructure and service matrix, the center of each unit was positioned over the service point by a vertical circulation stack that connects lower spaces with upper living spaces. The panel service core would be customized in the factory to include plumbing, electrical systems or any other mechanical device.

Dome dwellings rendering