On a larger scale Fuller hoped that Cloud Nine spheres could create communities able to migrate according to changes in environment, population, culture, or any other varying conditions. Another important part of the vision is that Cloud Nine would offer a means for people to “converge and deploy around Earth without its depletion.”
Little follow up has been done on this particular vision of Fuller’s, but it is interesting to speculate on how a Cloud Nine city would function. If we assume that the average Cloud Nine structure supports 7,000 people, it would take between 35 and 36 spheres to create a city of 250,000. A present day city of similar population is
This first collage explores what a city of 36 Cloud Nine spheres might look like. Since each sphere is also meant to be a self supporting community it is interesting to picture such a city in landscape otherwise unused by humans. As mentioned, Fuller’s idea was that Cloud Nine would allow minimum disturbance to the natural environment below, it becomes interesting to note what a flock of these semi-permanent spheres would do to a landscape, for instance, the Cloud Nine city modeled below would create areas of constant shadow on the desert floor, a condition not natural to this location. Would the sphere cities also have other unperceived impacts on the environment surrounding the community?
Assuming that it would not be preferred for some spheres to occupy space below others, and that a certain spacing would be required between the spheres (for the purposes of allowing sunlight to enter each sphere properly), the map below predicts how the plan layout of a city of 250,000 inhabitants compares to the space covered by a typical city today of that size. The city of
Finally, Buckminster Fuller only briefly mentions that the Cloud Nine spheres could support “several thousand” inhabitants. How would the space of the sphere be divided to allow for communities of this size to inhabit the spaces efficently. The following sketches are my own speculation and experimentation based on some rough statistics.Sketch to come