Strange Ones In The Dome

In the June 1937 issue of the science-fiction magazine Astounding Stories, domes feature in an Antarctic city.

Thirteen years later, in 1950, a film went on release called Rocketship X-M. The plot involved a spaceship that goes off course while being flown to the moon. It reaches Mars, where there is a dome-shaped building, and a hostile civilisation.

At the same time Buckminster Fuller was beginning to develop his revolutionary geodesic domes.

Richard Buckminster Fuller: "When I invented and developed my first clear-span, all-weather geodesic dome, the two largest domes in the world were both in Rome and were each about 50 metres in diameter. They are St.Peter's, built around A.D. 1500, and the Pantheon, built around A.D. 1. Each weighs approximately 15,000 tonnes. In contrast, my first 50 metre diameter geodesic all-weather dome installed in Hawaii weighs only 15 tonnes - one-thousandth the weight of its masonry counterpart. An earthquake would tumble both the Roman domes, but it would leave the geodesic unharmed."

An aluminium foil-clad version of one of Buckminster Fuller's cardboard domes, erected in Montreal, 1957.

During the 1950s, contactees like Howard Menger made references to dome-shaped buildings on the moon and other planets in our solar system.

Howard Menger: "On Venus, the buildings are dome-shaped and semi-translucent to permit light and color to enter. Some of the buildings resemble our own modern organic architecture."

There were indeed many architects who at least planned to build 'modern' dome-shaped buildings from the late-1940s onwards.

An interesting example, from 1962, is Roberto Matta's 'Minimal House of the Awakened Man.' Here is the biography of Roberto Matta Echaurren from the Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art & Artists -
'..Chilean-born painter who studied architecture under Le Corbusier, from 1934, but joined the Surrealists in 1937 and began painting, contributing his own brand of organic abstractionism which has sexual and science-fiction overtones.'

Suspended construction in copper and aluminium, consisting of monastic cells linked by bridges, gangways and corridors. It has neither doors nor windows: some of the walls are transparent and slide open.

In 1969, David Bowie sent a copy of design plans for his Beckenham Arts Lab to disc jockey John Peel, based around geodesic domes.

Three years later, he wrote the song Drive-In Saturday.
And, in June 1973, he was asked in an interview about the lyrics.

Question: "..saying that you saw some silver domes, which gave you the inspiration for 'Drive-In Saturday'?"

David Bowie: "Yeah, I saw a lot of things in the desert at night, in the early hours of the morning on the American trains... yes, I saw some domes."

Question: "Was that the inspiration for 'Drive-In Saturday'?"

Bowie: "Yeah, basically it was, um, I played around with the idea of domes as habitat or military installations or industry level (?). I decided to settle for habitat in that particular song."

Check out also Millennium Dome