Sioux Falls Argus Leader, SD
02-12-07
Architects: Dome possible, but pricey
Largest in the world cost $1.2 billion
By Jeff Martin
jemartin@argusleader.com
"Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
A handful of domes around the world could enclose St. Joseph Cathedral, the
Qwest building and the Sheraton Sioux Falls - all under the same roof with room
for walking paths around them.
But it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to construct such gargantuan
structures - $1.2 billion for one of the largest, in Greenwich, England.
Architects who have seen the drawing of Sanford's planned dome in central
Sioux Falls say it can be done.
"It's totally feasible," said Thomas Leslie, associate professor of architecture
at Iowa State University. "With enough money, you can build anything, right?"
Sanford Health will have millions to work with after T. Denny Sanford donates
$400 million. Sanford officials haven't said how much money would be required
for new research buildings or a dome to cover them. Engineers say costs could
range from several million dollars to several hundred million, depending on the
design, materials and scale of the structure.
But Sanford Heath President and CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft and others connected
to Sanford have seen several examples of what it might look like.
On a trip to Las Vegas, they viewed a structure that covered a courtyard and
connected several buildings, said David Link, executive vice president of Sanford
Health.
A dome on the Sanford campus, Link said, would be an icon for Sioux Falls. It
also would provide a comfortable climate year-round for world-class researchers.
"It was really Kelby's vision of a way we could set an image for our research
activities that would be recognizable to researchers throughout the country and
around the world," Link said.
Another giant structure is being planned near Pella, Iowa, as part of the
Earthpark project.
Plans there call for a structure about 150 feet high that would enclose about four
acres. Earthpark will include an indoor rain forest, aquarium and other exhibits.
Its shape will be similar to a nautilus shell, and its roof will be made of a material
called Foiltec.
The total price tag is estimated at $155 million, said David Oman, Earthpark's
executive director. (it's not yet known how much the structure alone will end up
costing). Construction reportedly will begin later this year.
Grand designs
Bold as they are, the Sioux Falls and Iowa plans seem Lego-like when compared
to the vision of R. Buckminster Fuller, the inventor who was kicked out of Harvard
twice before introducing the world to geodesic domes.
Fuller, who died in 1983, was seen as a visionary who sought to use technology
to improve the human condition - an aim similar to Sanford Health's new
research mission.
Nearly a half-century ago, Fuller outlined a plan to encase several blocks of highrise buildings in Manhattan within a dome: "A dome of this size would cover New
York City, east and west, from the East River to the Hudson, at 42nd Street, and
north and south, from 62nd Street to 22nd Street - an area of 50 blocks which
includes all of the upper Manhattan skyscraper city," he wrote in 1960.
"Bucky speculated that in five or six winters, the cost savings from not having to
remove snow could have paid for the whole thing," Fuller's friend and colleague,
retired Southern Illinois University professor Bill Perk, said in an interview.
The issue of how a Sioux Falls dome would withstand snow and ice is
"something the engineers would take very seriously," Leslie said.
Sioux Falls sees an average of about 40 inches of snow each year, and the
record is 95 inches in the winter of 1968-69.
Depending on the design, heat from inside could melt some snow, but "you'd
design it for a full snow load, just in case," he said.
Climate controls
Another significant challenge would be figuring out how to control the
environment inside the dome efficiently, Leslie said.
It can take a tremendous amount of energy to keep the temperature at a
comfortable level. "That's one of the reasons you don't see a lot of these," Leslie
said.
The roofing material to be used at Iowa's Earthpark is fabricated by a German
firm, Oman said. It consists of three layers, each one only a few millimeters thick,
separated by pockets of air, he said.
Perk was intrigued that a health system was involved in the Sioux Falls plan
because researchers have been studying ways to convert medical waste into
energy. That, he said, could be one way for a hospital to provide some of the
energy needed for the dome.
Planners will look at a variety of designs, Link said, and they hope the dome
could become a reality in the next 15 years.
- Jeff Martin can be reached at 331-2373.