Cardboard domes
February 13, 2006 2:03 PM   Subscribe

Cardboard Geodesic Dome. A how-to on building a geodesic dome out of cardboard, a bit of wood, some duct tape and paint. Plus some rebar if you don't want the finished dome to fly like a kite. If you like the concept but not the size calculate your own then apply the concept.
posted by Mitheral (14 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
That calculator is awesome.

I'd love to eventually build a dome for a workshop, once I'm living rurally.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:06 PM on February 13, 2006


Bucky to the max! Here is a nice little 3V paper dome pattern for your desk: just print, cut, fold, and tape.

Once upon a time, we bought plans and property to build a 36 foot diameter dome, but decided against it. Although domes can be impressive structures, they use non-standard construction, have too many roof seams, furnishing them is like fitting square pegs into a round hole, and the resale appeal is much less than standard homes. If you add extensions to make them livable for people and cars, you might as well build a standard box. Still miss that View Cupola, though, and wouldn't a Dymaxion car look great in the garage?

Domes are a great concept: they just need the right problem.
posted by cenoxo at 4:26 PM on February 13, 2006


I read an excellent article by one of the foremost dome builders in California in the 1970s. I don't remember where to find the piece, but the essence of the story was: domes suck. This man had built dozens of the things over the years and eventually came to the conclusion that the problems associated with domes (leaks, heating and cooling problems, lack of straight wall space) far outweighed the benefits. And importantly, construction costs are much higher than those of a normal house.
posted by soiled cowboy at 5:39 PM on February 13, 2006


I used to be keen on domes, but now what I want is a yurt. Unlike domes, yurt development has had centuries of refinement of human beings actually living in them.
posted by fings at 6:49 PM on February 13, 2006


Domes and yurts and modular homes and such are great, I just wish they could somehow be brought to the urbs or the suburbs. Hmm, maybe they could be built in a parking garage...
posted by Citizen Premier at 10:20 PM on February 13, 2006


I'm pretty sure this is the article soiled cowboy is talking about. There were several dome houses in the suburban neighborhood where I grew up; all were gradually replaced by more practical designs over the years.

Domes are great fun at Burning Man (which is what these cardboard models were obviously designed for). But for real life construction, not so much.
posted by ook at 10:54 PM on February 13, 2006


Yeah, the problem with domes is that most "stuff" is squarish.

Especially useful stuff. And that's exactly the kind of stuff I want to be able to fit nicely into my dwelling.
posted by flaterik at 11:55 PM on February 13, 2006


Yeah, the problem with domes is that most "stuff" is squarish.

If enough people lived in domes, other people would sell dome-shaped furniture -- things with the right (correct, non-right) angles.

But that isn't happening because, I guess, domes just are not efficient as shapes to contain people and their stuff. Living in a dome would be like living in an attic under the slope of the roof, only the slope is also circular so there isn't even a high central strip, only a high center point.

They don't do crazy stuff like growing cubic melons because we live in an artificially right-angled world but because cubes pack more tightly than spheres do, and, unless you're rich enough to be very wasteful, arranging a living space is largely about tightly packing shapes without wasting lots of the expensive building footprint on odd angles.

A cylindrical building might be efficient as a home if land is cheap or free and you didn't need to use up the space between dwellings efficiently. That would make yurts and the like OK in their rural settings but would explain why you don't find city dwellers switching to yurts -- too much is wasted when you have to maximize the number of round cookies you cut out of a square sheet of dough.
posted by pracowity at 2:17 AM on February 14, 2006


flaterik writes "Yeah, the problem with domes is that most 'stuff' is squarish."

This is true. I've been investigating earth sheltered home and one of the easiest strongest methods is a reinforced concrete dome. But unless you make the thing large enough for two stories and therefor effectively flatten out the curve you have a real problem fitting required furniture like beds.

I think I'm going to be making a dome for shade and wind protection during my wife's ball tournaments. The Canadian prairie in the dead of summer has a lot of resemblance to burning man. Hot, no shade and often wicked winds that get sand and dirt into everything. And ball fields seem to always be built on the most inhospitable land far from trees though often with a copious number of gophers. The self supporting shade of a dome is very appealing.
posted by Mitheral at 6:37 AM on February 14, 2006


pracowity writes "too much is wasted when you have to maximize the number of round cookies you cut out of a square sheet of dough"

This of course is a problem of land planning and structured thinking. Instead of the rectangular lots with mostly useless front lawn of suburbia; round footprint dewellings could be constructed on a lots with a hex grid pattern. Two hexs per dwelling. Roads built between hexes would have an automatic traffic calming effect.
posted by Mitheral at 6:53 AM on February 14, 2006


round footprint dewellings could be constructed on a lots with a hex grid pattern

...and still waste space cutting round shapes out of hex lots.

A hex footprint on a hex grid would make use of all space, though it would lengthen the distance of a walk or bicycle ride across town and waste fuel in motorized vehicles (and therefore introduce unnecessary pollution) and eliminate all horizontal views longer than a block because you would spend all your time zigging and zagging around buildings. A round (or roundish geodesic) dome on a hex lot will waste space between packed domes and still have the zigzag street problem. (I like the idea of slowing traffic, but better to just put regulators in cars that make going fast either expensive or impossible.)

It's not as if people haven't thought about this problem before -- there are trillions of real estate dollars at stake in making the best use of city land -- and it looks as if the best way to use space when land is not cheap is with rectangles that allow for tight packing of buildings without introducing unnecessary distances between buildings.

the mostly useless front lawn of suburbia

Any plain green lawn of standardized grass, front or back or side, is a pathetic watered-down imitation of nature, but pretty much any patch of green is better than no patch of green, and if a front lawn increases the distance between people's bedroom walls and the sidewalks and streets, it makes the place more livable for homeowners, pedestrians, drivers, and even (to a very limited extent) other creatures.
posted by pracowity at 11:52 AM on February 14, 2006


Spent the 60's at Southern Illinois University when Bucky's design dept was building domes all over town. They were fun as a project but like the Wenger Cube, truncated hexahedron, better, www.wengersundial.com
posted by cedar key at 1:40 PM on February 14, 2006


When I was in college, I saw Bucky give a lecture. I was suitably inspired to hack around with his ideas - and then I had an geometry epiphany: in a blinding flash, I figured out how to compute the angles for a Bucky dome. So I built a basketball-sized model dome out of index stock.

That angle calculator really took me back: thanks for the post, I didn't know I needed that.

I loves the internets.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:36 PM on February 14, 2006


Ok, this is awesome!
posted by OmieWise at 1:44 PM on March 1, 2006


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