Among the many wild proposals for NYC that never came to fruition, including a skyscraper hanging off an asteroid to an eco-friendly building resembling a giant, tree-covered cruise ship, Buckminster Fuller’s mega-dome might be the craziest.
In the late 1960s, American architect, Buckminster Fuller, proposed a solution to combat earth from overheating, specifically in NYC. His proposal consisted of a massive, climate-controlled glass dome that would span from river to river between 21st to 64th Streets over Manhattan. The ambitious project came to be known as the “Dome over Manhattan.”
Underneath the protection of the dome, New Yorkers wouldn’t experience the inconvenience of ongoing weather conditions outside of the dome’s circumference. Yes, that means it would never snow under the dome. Fuller’s proposal had hoped to reduce air pollution and cut heating and cooling costs by keeping the environment at a regulated temperature that wouldn’t require individual heating/cooling in enveloped buildings.
So how would the dome even be constructed? According to old reports, the Dome over Manhattan would be held in place by cables. It would be made with “wire-reinforced, one-way vision, shatterproof glass, mist-plated with aluminum to cut sun glare while admitting light,” explained Hatch circa 1976. “From the outside, it would look like a great glittering hemispheric mirror, while from the inside, its structural elements would be as invisible as the wires of a screened porch, and it could appear as a translucent film through which the sky, clouds, and stars would appear.”
The Dome over Manhattan even had plans to collect rainwater from thunderstorms that wouldn’t breach the glass through a guttering system that would collect the water in a reservoir for sustainable use and consumption.
You can imagine the outlandish proposal would obviously be quite costly if it ever came to life. However, designers argued the savings on snow removal within the dome would pay off the construction costs in 10 years, according to the article A Review of Domed Cities and Architecture: Past, Present and Future. Apparently, NYC set aside $97.7 million for snow removal in 2024’s fiscal year—not that they had to use it all.
In the end, the project proved to be too improbable. Yet, you must recognize the thorough ideation and genius that came from Fuller who was known to be “the world’s most successful failure.”