Aluminum's sustainability on display at the National Museum of American History through the reconstruction of an extruded aluminum geodesic dome.
"Weatherbreak," the first large-span geodesic dome built in North America and the first "dome home" in the world, was built on site at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the museum's Flag Hall and is on view through July 27, 2023. The dome was designed by Jeffrey Lindsay, a former student of renowned American architect, inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller, and was originally constructed on the outskirts of Montreal, Quebec in 1950. It was designed to withstand snow and winds up to 200 miles per hour. Lindsay designed Weatherbreak as a lightweight, stable structure that could resist extreme environmental impacts. It was later reconstructed in the early 1960s in the Hollywood Hills as a mid-century modern home for architect Bernard Judge.
Image: Courtesy of the Jeffrey Lindsay Collection at the University of Calgary Archives.
The three-day reconstruction of the dome at the museum was led by architectural students from Catholic University of America. Weatherbreak will rise 25 feet high and span 49 feet wide.
Through July 27th, visitors to the museum's "Reconstructing Weatherbreak: Geodesic Domes in the Age of Extreme Weather" display will be able to walk beneath the lattice framework to marvel at the sturdy, clever design utilizing extruded aluminum. The exhibition allows visitors to experience one of the most significant architectural innovations of the 20th century and contemplate how history can inform today's search for sustainable shelters in an era of climate change.
Image: Catholic University of America
Students use the Project as a Learning Experience
"Decades later, the nation and planet are focused on sustainability as it relates to climate change. This living exhibition adds to such urgent dialogue by reconstructing and contextualizing the dome for contemporary audiences in an age of extreme weather," said Abeer Saha, Merrill Family Secretarial Scholar and Curator in the museum's Division of Work and Industry.
According to the Smithsonian, students worked on this once-in-a-lifetime, hands-on project to study, fabricate and rebuild the dome as part of an architecture studies class under the direction of Tonya Ohnstad, assistant professor of architecture at Catholic University, and faculty member Lorenzo Cardim DeAlmeida. With no instruction manual to guide the reconstruction, the project team had to build models and work with partners to reconstruct missing or damaged parts to reassemble Weatherbreak.
Sections of Weatherbreak, including the bottom support rungs and the top of the dome, were reconstructed using replica parts. The museum will retain some of these replica parts, and Catholic University will have a full set of replica components for future teaching purposes.
"Hydro is pleased to partner with Catholic University to assist the Smithsonian in helping revive this historic structure. Much like Fuller's vision for "Spaceship Earth," for nearly 120 years Hydro has sought to create a more viable society by developing natural resources into products and solutions in innovative and efficient ways," stated Trond Gjellesvik, President of Hydro Aluminum Metals USA. "The team at our Henderson, Kentucky, recycling plant was able to produce extrusion ingots for this historic project almost entirely from post-consumer scrap, the reuse of which is critical to improve sustainability."
Image: Hydro
Hydro Adds to the Project's Sustainability Attributes
Hydro formed this recycled material into the extruded profiles used in the structure at its extrusion facility in Elkhart, Indiana, one of the company's many manufacturing sites in North America supplying the building and construction industry. "By increasing the use of post-consumer scrap and driving towards 100% recycled content, aluminum can play a vital role in decarbonizing the building industry," noted Charlie Straface, President of Hydro Extrusion North America. "By taking end-of-life aluminum scrap and transforming it back into building components, we feel this project highlights the potential of aluminum to address climate change in unique ways."
In addition to providing replacement pieces for the original structure, Hydro is providing enough material for Catholic University to construct a replica dome for a traveling exhibit in the future. Should that structure ever reach the end of its useful life, it will have an infinite future ahead of it.
Hydro's Peter Hedman and Duncan Pitchford participated in a lecture with the Catholic University of America architecture professors and students on the many uses of aluminum in architectural applications, answering students' questions and explaining Hydro's efforts to lower the carbon footprint of aluminum building materials.
Learn more about aluminum's sustainability.