Today’s picture comes to you from St. Louis, Missouri:
It’s of a piece of the structure of the “Climatron” dome, a conservatory at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
It actually has an interesting history, some of which you can see in the picture if you know where to look. It was originally built in 1960, in the form of a geodesic dome — with plexiglass panels suspended from the outer aluminum framework. The design was selected because it allowed for a free-standing greenhouse without interior supports. But it wasn’t long before people realized that plexiglass wasn’t the best choice — it yellowed quickly, and started leaking at the seams.
So between 1988 and 1990, the dome was refurbished, and the plexiglass panels replaced with ones of glass / plastic construction. As a result, the new panels held up their own weight and the old aluminum framework was no longer needed. But for historic value the framework was maintained — so the climatron is really one dome (of glass) freely standing inside another (of aluminum framework).
As for the image, I liked all the angles formed by the framework and glass panels — and the interesting mix of colors from the glass and aluminum and sky were an extra bonus!
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