Delhi-based architects are promoting plans to build vast bubble-like enclosures to create urban havens in environmentally challenging cities such as the Indian capital and Beijing, China. Vast domes have been the basis of many unfulfilled dream schemes, though the U.K.’s Eden project provides a beacon of hope.
The proposed “Bubbles” would enclose urban parks with environmentally controlled air which would be shared with surrounding buildings. Unlike geodesic domes, Bubbles would be formed by a filigree of inflatable “air beams” connected by stressed cables. Infilled with translucent cushions of ethyl tetra fluro ethylene, the Bubbles would be kept up by internal air pressure.