Life in the Round

"When my ideas are needed badly enough, they're accepted. So I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented."

--Buckminster Fuller

The time seems to have come at last for Fuller's best-known idea: the geodesic dome that he first patented in 1954. Long used for large exhibition halls and warehouses, it suddenly has caught on as a dome-icile. Hillsides and forests from Connecticut to California are being covered with easy-to-build, simple-to-maintain dome homes.

There are conflicting explanations for the new-found popularity of the dome. For some, it is a matter of lifestyle. Says Lloyd Kahn, a California teacher who is a leading proselytizer of dome living: "People who like domes are people who want to change their lives, who want to break out of the little boxes in which people have always lived in the Western world." Gary Miller, vice president of Tension Structures, a Michigan dome-building firm, points out that circular living is not new. "Indians and Eskimos used it for centuries. People like circular things because they give a feeling of warmth and friendliness. Because they're less formal than square walls, which are esthetically cold, dome houses are appropriate for our informal times."

More pragmatic reasons are offered by Chicago Architect Lawrence J. Harrison, who is building his own dome home. "The dome is the greatest thing since the tent," he says. "It's cheap, efficient, simple to put together and is the most economic way of covering space. This is not just the answer to low-cost housing. This is the answer to low-cost, cooperative, self-built housing."

Domes are indeed relatively easy to put together. The basic units are equilateral triangles bolted together at each angle to form a many-faceted hemisphere. Four men only moderately skillful with tools can put up an average dome in about eight hours. Costs are modest. Cadco of New York State offers a 39-foot diameter dome with 1,100 sq. ft. of living space for $4,900 (erected). Doors, windows, heating and foundation all add to the cost. Cadco's rule-of-thumb estimate of total cost is about $9.50 per square foot. Dynadome, of Phoenix, Ariz., sells its 40-foot dome in kit form for $2,500.

There are disadvantages too. Kahn, author of Domebook One, a basic dome dweller text, says: "Leaking is the dome's biggest drawback." He adds, however, that the problem is well on the way to solution: new caulking materials make it possible to seal chronically leaky seams. Another disadvantage is the free movement of air in the usually non-partitioned domes, which makes them noisy to live in--but easy to heat and cool. Ordinary furniture looks awkward in domes: built for rectangular homes, familiar chairs and tables do not fit against curving walls (dome dwellers have already designed furniture that will). Bathrooms pose another problem. "You use the same kind of plumbing," says Kahn, "but it's difficult to get a shape that works with the rest of the geometry." For this reason, several builders have erected domes that are three-quarters or seven-eighths (instead of half) of a sphere. That enables the dome dwellers to live in an uncluttered, unpartitioned hemisphere with enough space below the main living level for bathroom and storage facilities. Conventionally designed doors and windows pose aesthetic difficulties: the traditional right-angled shapes do not fit gracefully into a dome's curves. Thus triangular windows and entrances that tunnel under the dome's walls are gaining favor.

Class Struggle. Richard Slater, an engineer and expert on low-cost housing for the Federal Government, doubts that the dome will ever become the favorite form of housing for the masses. "Lowincome families," he says, "usually aspire to the split-level ranch-style homes that higher-income families have. As long as the dome has the reputation of a low-cost home, no one will want to live in one."

Despite such doubts, domes are mushrooming in a dizzying array of skins--from the wood and metal favored by kit manufacturers to brick, stone, cement and plastic. Kahn has experimented with domes of plywood walls insulated with nitrogen-filled vinyl pillows, aluminum frames covered with Plexiglas, and wood covered with burlap then sprayed with quick-hardening plastic foam. Perhaps the most interesting new project is one involving the use of Mylar plastic film coated so that one side reflects light while the other is transparent. Outsiders thus see only an opaque dome, but those inside have an unobstructed view of the world.

Design Teacher Jay Baldwin lives with his domemate Kathleen in a totally transparent dome in the Santa Cruz mountains. "At first," says Baldwin, "people say, 'Far out, you live in a transparent dome.' But for us it becomes just like the windshield of a car. You get unaware of it ... it just keeps out cold and rain."

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