I first caught the geodesic-dome bug back in the 1970s, for no rea­son other than my ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with unique dwellings.

While there are many alter­na­tives, domes in par­tic­u­lar have some impor­tant and prac­ti­cal advan­tages over the rec­tan­gu­lar boxes that most of us live in. From the Tiny House Blog: [1]

• The sphere is nature’s most effi­cient shape, and a dome cov­ers the most liv­ing area with the least amount of sur­face area. When com­pared with a similar-sized rectangular-shaped house, a dome home will have 30% less sur­face area and use at least 1/3 less lumber.
• As domes have less sur­face area, they reduce the amount of energy required to heat or cool the inte­rior space; less heat is trans­ferred to and from its surroundings.
• Though a dome uses less mate­r­ial, it is unques­tion­ably stronger than a rectangular-shaped house using stick-frame man­u­fac­tur­ing. Dome struc­tures have unpar­al­leled strength and a nat­ural abil­ity to with­stand immense earth­quake, hur­ri­cane and snow load forces.
• A dome’s more com­pact foot­print saves perime­ter shell and foun­da­tion materials.

One can infer that domes are rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive to build and main­tain, and more planet friendly. Quakes, hur­ri­canes and nasty bliz­zards? No problem.

Prob­a­bly the biggest threat to the dome is from Home­own­ers and Builders Asso­ci­a­tions who for var­i­ous rea­sons lobby in favor of the sta­tus quo. If you’re fully invested in a McMan­sion, I sup­pose hav­ing an upstart, com­mie geo­desic dome pop up next door like some mush­room can be disconcerting.

But curved walls and sur­faces can be aes­thet­i­cally beau­ti­ful, which I think is among its strongest advantages.

Ref­er­ences

1. Curved by Design | Tiny House Blog
2. Curved by Design, Inc.

Posted on March 15th, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Design, Greenology