Geodesic Dome

This project is a geodesic dome designed and built by the Wheeler Design Club. It stands at around eight feet tall and is made out of PVC pipe and zip ties. We worked together as a club to design, fabricate, and assemble this over the course of the 2021-2022 school year.

My contributions to this project include: Pitching the dome to school management; brainstorming and designing connections; measuring, cutting, and drilling PVC pipe; and assembling the dome. I spent a lot of time coming into the lab to work on the project outside of club meeting times to make sure we stayed on schedule.

Contributors to this project include our faculty advisor Molly Mason, Eliot Wemple, Lanney Jing, Ciana O'Flaherty, Myles Chang, Peter Morocco, and Noah Medina.

This is a sketch model that Eliot Wemple and I mocked up as a connection joint. This prototype was not as effective as the one we decided to use due to how long it would take to fabricate many of them in slightly different variations.

This is the connection design that we used for the dome. It consists of two different sized slices of PVC to hold the dome struts in place. A zip tie connects the struts to the inner ring while the outer ring keeps the form of the dome.