Geodesic spotlight: Blair Wolfram
Blair Wolfram in Greenland
The Dome Guy from Dome Incorporated, Blair F. Wolfram is a dome builder, manufacturer, and founder of Dome Inc. Building geodesic domes since 1982, he was recently awarded patent #7,808,404 Connector for Geodesic Dome Structures. This year 2012 Wolfram will manufacture his 500th dome.
R. Buckminster Fuller’s home in Carbondale, Illinois
The Dome Guy has had some significant dome accomplishments to date, including:
“The Dome Over the Dome”. R. Buckminster Fuller is credited with inventing the geodesic dome, and designing over 3000 domes, however he only owned and lived in one dome home during his lifetime. The very first dome home ever built is in Carbondale, IL, at Southern Illinois University where Bucky was a professor until 1972. In 2001, Wolfram built a dome over Bucky’s dome home to protect the property from further deterioration, completely enclosing the dome until restoration on this modest but historically significant building can be completed.
NEEM ice core drilling research station in Greenland
The Northernmost dome in the world at 77 degrees north, Copenhagen University contracted Wolfram to build the main dome as the primary housing unit to support scientific teams of 52 people during full capacity at NEEM, an ice core drilling research station on the northern arctic ice cap in Greenland. This is a 14 nation international operation, core drilling to study the Eemian interglacial ice a mile and a half deep and 115,000 years old. The logistics of the operation were supported by 109th Airborne Division of the Air National Guard, flying C-130 cargo planes equipped with skis to land on ice.
Wolfram featured The Imagine Dome at the Grand Opening of the New Science Museum of Minnesota during the millennium celebration January 1, 2000.
There are multiple Dome Inc. domes on two University Campuses SUNY and SIU; and Easthampton Elementary School in NJ., Other commercial domes include a storage facility at the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Plant and three complete spheres for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, B.C. .
Blair has an international presence with domes in Kuwait, Norway, Anguilla, Greenland, many domes in Canada, Alaska and Hawaii. The most recent dome delivery as of this writing is a dome auditorium shipped to Rio de Janiero.
Exciting domestic projects include a rooftop cabana for an internationally known Latino singer and former soap opera star in South Beach Miami, and working with Dustin Feider on his first tree house domes. After shipping numerous domes to Burning Man, Wolfram has developed the Occupy Burning Man Dome, a basic lightweight dome frame of amazing strength that fits in the trunk of any car, and assembles into a 21′ diameter dome.
Wolfram has completed engineering for his standard domes that meet the extreme 150 mph hurricane wind requirements in coastal Florida as well as the worst urban snow load conditions of 120 psf in Buffalo, NY. The bulk of his domes are private residences, and he has also developed the most inexpensive engineered steel frame for a small dome home or cabin for the do-it-yourself builder.
Currently Wolfram is a participating member of the ORCoD Research Team, headed by Thomas T.K. Zung and Shoji Sadao from the architecture firm of Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung. In the near future Wolfram will issue a press release for a significant museum dome project which is in its final design phase.
You may contact Blair or Dome Inc at:
http://www.hurricanedomes.com
thedomeguy@domeincorporated.com
612-333-DOME (3663)
