Why is the metrodome inflatable

Core Mission. Giving Back. Request a Consultation. Real Estate. Air Quality. Civil Engineering. Custom Compliance. That game was moved to Monday night and will be played at Ford Field in Detroit.

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Donate today. And the Metrodome is currently the only active air-pressurized stadium in the National Football League. The former residents of the Silverdome, the Detroit Lions, have played at Ford Field since that facility opened in The Silverdome is now used for music and various sports events.

The University of Northern Iowa U. Another air dome, Vancouver's BC Place , where the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics were held, is being replaced with a retractable fabric roof. Sala says the stadium was built about the same time as the Carrier, which opened in September Dome was part of our generation—it's part hybrid now," he notes.

But the Carrier Dome is here to stay. It's always been properly inspected and maintained, Sala says, pointing out that Syracuse gets more snow than Minneapolis. Further, the Carrier roof has held up even with as much as 1. What worked in The technology behind air-pressurized domes was popularized by the late architect and engineer David Geiger, who designed the U. Pavilion for Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan; but inflatable domes predate Geiger. The U. Bary for an inflatable structure.

It's a technology, though, that even Geiger may have foreseen as obsolete. His own designs graduated to an unpressurized cable-dome structure, as evidenced by his work on the roof of the Florida Suncoast Dome—now called Tropicana Field—in Saint Petersburg, for example.

More recently, some stadiums with air-inflated supported "tensegrity" domes—a structural system that is still commonly used for other sports facilities such as tennis courts—are being shuttered. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. This article is from the archive of our partner.

The stadium is pumped full of air to keep the roof up. This requires people to enter and exit the dome via airlocks, to maintain positive pressure within the playing field area. Wikipedia explains the other four. It's a platter. The dome is dead.

There is no dome.