Communities May Be Weatherized (Edwardsville Intelligencer, 1952)
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 at 3:03PM The Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) ran an article on December 15, 1952 outlining a vision of weather-controlled communities of the future.
"Weather-conditioned" communities in the future are perfectly feasible, according to a professor of architecture.
Ambrose M. Richardson of the University of Illinois announced that his graduate architecture students already are working on a model of plastic pillows, helium-filled and joined to make a mile-high floating dome.
Next spring Richardson intends to try the idea with a small dome covering about an acre of land.
He said the next step may be covering 10 or 15 acre areas such as football stadiums and baseball parks. Larger domes - made of thousands of transparent pillows each only a few feet square - covering whole communities would be only a step away.
See also:
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Hubert H. Humphrey's Year 2000 (1967)
Superfarm of the Year 2020 (1979)
architecture, dome, domed cities, edwardsville intelligencer, weather in 1950s 
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Reader Comments (2)
He wasn't that far off! Except for the helium it sounds a lot like the
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2007/id20070424_903199.htm" REL="nofollow">ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene pillows that are being used in the building for the olympic swimming pool in China and in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Project" REL="nofollow">Eden Project in the UK.
Shopping malls are basically rofed over pedestrian-only city centers. In Northern Europe pedestrian only city centers are common. In Milan they are often covered. In Japan as well.