The Meeting Dome

At the beginning of the Summer La Loma Del Chivo community had been split into 4 corners…The Sunhouse, John’s Gypsy Camp, The Goatshed Hostel and Guil’s Nabolom, so we came up with the idea to build a central meeting space, an outdoor space on the path between the two places of congregation as a place for coffee, music conversations and art. When Guil got involved in the plan, he pulled out some inspiring drawings by Kiv from a few years back that suggested we needed a dome. It was about the same time when John Suficool drove Mike, Kikay Wes, Guil and I down into Terlingua to meet Don Bryant.

Don Bryant has been building domes for decades. Out here in the dessert, he has been evolving a smart way to build Geodesic domes. From the basic tetrahedron shapes, he takes the triangles and breaks them up into various frequencies of smaller triangles, much like the methods of Buckminster Fuller, however, Don rationalizes the complex construction this usually requires by generating jigs and forms for the original size panels, meaning one does not need to cut each and every triangle.

This means that with one jig, one can assemble the strong geodesic framework for the dome in record time. Furthering this idea, if enough panels are creates from the jig to create one dome, the panels themselves can become forms - assembled, copied on site and removed, leaving a dome framework and then being passed on to the next builders, or, another dome built connecting to the first.

This is the method that Don recommended to us. Trevor, who lives near to Don has tried this out and is currently building the first of his domes, so, while he is working on the window and door fittings, he has kindly lent us the forms before he starts on the second.

Before collecting the forms, Eric and I dug and filled a 1foot deep foundation at the same diameter to the forms - 18foot. Assembling and placing the forms took almost no time at all and the next day we started wiring together the rebar.  Once all the framework lines had been copied, and a rebar ring attached at the base to the foundation, the forms could be removed - by simply cutting the initial wiring.

We decided to go for a less expensive option by instead of using regular cement lath and trawling on the stucco, we would use chicken wire and cement-soaked sheets to create the initial egg-shell layer, this technique is borrowed from Mike Reynolds ‘The Hut’ video where they use this as an inexpensive way to make the first shell on a roof. This technique has worked well in the sense that it gives a backing for the cement and thus there is less loss of material - as there can often be when trowling through regular lathe. Paper - Mache building! Before adding the sheets we wired up electricity lines for where the lights and the outlets will go.

This is the stage we are currently on, see the photo album for more images during construction.