Domes of discovery

McLean features Italian architect Dante Bini who has dedicate his professional life to the development of "automated construction technologies." In 1965, he successfully constructed a 12-meter-diameter, 6-meter-high hemispherical concrete shell structure in three hours, using unique pneumatic formwork of a giant low-pressure balloon. This first prototype did, however, have some teething problems, particularly the uneven distribution of the wet concrete caused by an unpredictable (asymmetric) inflation. Improvements were made, and in 1967 at Columbia University, New York, Bini demonstrated in a few hours the construction of another large-scale Binishell. Over 1,500 Binishells were constructed throughout the world between 1970 and 1990, with diameters between 12 and 36 meters and with a varying elliptical section