ARCHITECTURE: Enormous Span Structures---Impossible?

From: IN%"[email protected]" "List for the discussion of Buckminster
Fuller's works" 9-DEC-1993 08:36:54.43
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Subj: Really Large Structures

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From: MARTIN ROLLER <ROLLER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Really Large Structures
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Buckminster Fuller claims in several of his books, that using dome
constructions one could build arbitrarily large structures, the only
constrain would be the available material (see e.g. the sketches of
floating spheres of diameter one mile or a bubble enclosing Manhattan in
"The Dymaxion World").
Frei Otto, a German architect, argues that this is still impossible, nobody
could build a structure (arc, roof etc.) spanning one mile, say.

Does anybody know Fuller's precise calculations for the structural
stability of domes or more details of Otto's case against it? Who is right?

--
Martin Roller, Mathematik, . Tel +49 941 943 2991
Universitaet Regensburg, . Fax +49 941 943 2576
93040 Regensburg, Germany . roller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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