Convergence

The Vision

The Domes project is a radical eco-architectural experiment in long-term design thinking. Started in 2014 and due to be completed in 2023, the project has involved designing and building an earth-sheltered curvilinear structure consisting of two interconnected domes buried under earth but open to the above-ground environment on one side. The resulting structure has one “front” wall that overlooks a valley below, but is otherwise comprised of continuous curves.

The project consists of the double-domed structure, and above-ground utility building and garage, solar energy infrastructure (thermal and PV arrays), and the land surrounding the site. Together, they will serve as a writer’s/artist’s/thinker’s retreat to provide space for the creators of a more ecologically sound future.

The guiding principles of the project are scalar:

1. Built structures must elementally integrate with the processes that comprise its environment (spatial scale).

2. The site will be built for a moment 250 years in the future, and meant to last at least 500 years (temporal scale).

Both of these scalar principles turn out to fly in the face of architecture as we know it. That is, there’s a particular, unspoken scale to our current architectural imaginary. It’s driven by the scale of the human lifespan, the scales of capital, our conception of agency, our operative environmental scales, and basic inertia. When we design a building, we name our immediate needs and concerns, and consider a very small spatial scale surrounding it, and optimize the design to match those micro-scale dynamics. At its heart, I see this short-sightedness as a response not to larger timescales that are unknown, but to a presumption that they are known: that the future will fundamentally be like the present. The Domes project is an experiment in thinking, building, and dwelling at significantly expanded scales. My hope is that the project will provide inspiration for both the folks who use it as a retreat and the many more who will experience it through documentation.

The Design

The main structure consists of two extended half-domes connected by a short tunnel and buried underground, except for a front retaining wall (which also contains the door and all windows). Because curves bounce sunlight more effectively than rectilinear walls and ceilings, the domes are both underground (like a Hobbit hole) and bathed in warmth and sunlight. This combines extreme energy efficiency and passive cooling (the building regulates its own temperature and requires no active cooling even in the heat of summer) with an openness to its surrounding environment, copious light, and passive heating. Active heating is also enabled through an extensive hydronic system that integrates the outside with the inside, drawing heat from the sun and transferring it into the floors and domestic water supply inside.

Located in California’s fire ecology, the structure is designed to burn and survive. This in fact occurred in 2017 (read about it in the Chronicle section above). The structure uses no fossil fuels at all, and is net energy positive (it generates far more energy than it consumes on an annual basis).

It is designed to be beautiful as well as functional, utilizing curvilinear structures wherever possible to provide inspiring uses of space for work, gathering, and play.

Our final design combines two underground half domes, connected by a six foot arched passageway and sharing a single front retaining wall.  This single wall contains many windows and faces south for maximum sun exposure.

We’ve designed the house so that each separate dome has its own purpose.  The first dome is a gathering space, completely open with no interior walls: just a single curved surface that serves as the main structural wall and “ceiling.”  Only the large bay windows overlooking the valley are rectilinear; everything else in this Great Room is curved, including an open kitchen and dining area.  The second dome, separated by a six foot arched passageway, contains the master bedroom, bathroom, utility room, and office.  This, then, is a space for privacy and work.  Both sides of the house, however, are designed for comfort, tranquility, and inspiration.

We are excited to share this unique environment with you!

The Builders

I (Zach) direct the Domes project, but it has been a collaboration with my sister Jessica (with whom I formulated the values and design goals in the years prior to its ground breaking, and who has performed a great deal of work on the project), my mother Ann, who lives in her own house on the same property (making the project possible in the first place) and keeps things moving forward when I’m not there, and the many friends who have lent a hand to get this place built. It is truly a collaborative endeavor, and that has sustained and invigorated it over the many years required to bring it to fruition.

My sister Jess and I grew up in the oak-forested mountains overlooking Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, California. Committed to both ecologically-minded living and creative thinking, we have long dreamed of designing a building that embodies our values and allows us to share a connection to this beautiful place with our many loved ones. Such a structure would combine insights from the vast history of curved architecture with advanced materials, organic aesthetics, and creative uses of space and energy to produce a flexible space for dreaming, conversing, and making.  Best of all, it would be constructed by a community of our friends, and every member of the resulting collective would be able to use it in the future.

It has been a wild adventure so far: we’ve had to learn how to mold building materials into curves instead of straight lines, grappled with the challenges of an underground home, found ways to produce our own power (in the form of solar electric, solar thermal, and radiant heat systems), and faced natural disasters.  In 2017 the entire mountain faced the worst wildfire in 150 years.  With no one to defend the Domes, they were completely engulfed in flames for several hours before anyone arrived on the scene.  They survived with only minor damage, proving the value of climate-change aware architecture.  Traditional houses left undefended on the mountain all burned down.  This story, and many others, can be found in the posts below.

The project is ongoing, with spurts of building occurring each winter and summer. Estimated completion is Summer 2023.  Contact us if you’d like to join the collective!

Chronicle

Over the years, my sister Jessica and I have written occasional blog posts here to chronicle our adventures and setbacks as this multi-year project unfolds.  Here they are (most recent first):

2022 Update: Infrastructure

Element and Flow

The 2017 Fires

Summer 2017: Covering the Domes

Winter 2016

Closure: Shotcreting the Domes

Raising the Bones: A Dome Building Update

Layers

Curves

Building, Thinking, Dwelling

 

Progress

We started designing this house at the beginning of 2014, research earth sheltered and dome structures, working on the blueprints, getting those plans approved by the County government, and sourcing our main components.

We finally broke ground in September 2015.  We dug a massive trench for utilities (water, power, and Internet), which ran for almost 500 feet down the ridge from our existing shed to the new build site.  This is a long way to run electric mains, and due to “voltage drop,” we had to significantly oversize our wires, making for quite a tough job!  Our ethernet connection also requires repeaters to stretch such distances.  Our solution was to use Power Over Ethernet (PoE) to inject a 48V DC source into the ethernet line, and then repeaters at strategic locations.  These repeaters are powered directly by the 48V flowing through the ethernet cable: no external power is necessary.  For this run, the cable surfaces about half way down the ridge, at the site of a current (and probably future) solar tracker, into a sealed box that contains the repeater.  This way we’ll be able to access it in future years.

In December 2015 we trenched the other end of this ethernet line from the shed to the existing house.  This will allow the existing house and Retreat House to be perpetually networked.  This will be important later on, when the Retreat House’s systems will post their status to the Internet, so that we can monitor them remotely.

In the summer of 2016 we excavated the site, formed and poured the foundation, and then, over a period of over two months, constructed the steel mesh structure of the domes and the ICF front wall.  The summer culminated in the shotcreting of the domes.  By the time we returned to our academic jobs, the structure existed!

In the fall, our wonderful carpenter Curtis Jones worked on the site during his days off from his regular construction work.  He constructed all of the internal wood walls in Dome 2 (Dome 1 has no internal walls), along with our attic area, which spans Dome 2’s bathroom, utility room, and hallway.

We returned for one week in December 2016 to plan out the entire ventilation and electrical systems.  We installed all permanent (in-wall, as opposed to in-attic) ductwork and mounted all electrical boxes in the wood walls (concrete dome walls already had all of the electrical boxes and conduit installed before the shotcrete).  We also designed some built-in furniture (cabinets and a bed) and went over those plans with Curtis, who finished them by the end of the winter.

Summer 2017 marked the construction of a large solar photovoltaic array (quite a challenge, as of course we did this all ourselves) as well as the dramatic covering of the domes with layers of waterproofing, a major operation requiring a month of work, involving a number of volunteers and occasionally large machinery (an articulated boom).  By the end of the summer Jerry Silva and his son Wyatt had relocated over 100 tons of earth from a hillside elsewhere on the property and carefully covered every inch of the domes!  Within weeks of finishing this, a major wildfire engulfed the entire mountain, including the domes.  Their earth sheltering and fireproof stucco front wall protected them from the flames, but some exterior features, and one important drain pipe were damaged.  After the fire, we planted seeds over the domes.  As the first rains of the late autumn began, the seeds sprouted, creating a root structure to protect the earth from erosion.  Our time on site in the fall and winter was mostly used to assess and repair damage.

Summer 2018  involved only a two-week building stint, but was packed with important activities: we  re-landscaped the top of the domes, laying in the plumbing for a solar thermal array (which will be used to provide the primary hot water for the house, including the radiant floor heating), added a French drain and re-sloped the hill to allow more rainwater to exit the back side.  We also did a massive amount of in-wall electrical work.

Winter 2018 was a one-week intensive build session where we focused on two conduit leaks, installing an automatic mini-pump system that keeps one conduit completely drained, and altering a second conduit so that it doesn’t leak at all.  We also wired up all of our door and window sensors, and laid all of the in-wall low voltage wiring, running it to the central “Brain” area of the Utility room, where a custom Arduino-based system will take in all of the data and regulate the house.

Summer 2019 saw us finish all in-wall plumbing and electrical, expand and upgrade the Kiosk with fireproof siding and a larger foundation pad, pour concrete footings on the roof for the solar thermal array, add extensions to the front wing walls of the Domes to better contain erosion, form and pour a front patio, add three fire suppression (sprinkler) loops for future fire protection, and add a number of outdoor fire sensors.  We brought in yet another load of earth to fill the latest roof settling.  We added a new ethernet general low voltage line from the attic to the Kiosk to better control and monitor the future fire detection and suppression system.  Because we completed the interior in-wall wiring and plumbing, we could then hire drywall installers to put in all of the Dome 2 drywall.  We also hired plasterers to plaster all of Dome 1 and the concrete and ICF walls of Dome 2.

By Winter 2019 the final interior wall surfaces (drywall, plaster, and plywood in parts of the utility room) were in place.  Zach and Michael Hiscox spent two weeks working on the hydronics system in the utility room.  We completed all of the copper plumbing, as well as the complex electrical work to run everything.  We designed overhangs for all windows and the front door, which Michael fabricated over the remainder of the winter.  We also constructed the solar thermal array on the roof.  The space was then cleared for the cabinet makers to install all of our custom cabinets.

Summer 2020 was an intensive trip with mostly indoor work.  We wired all of the receptacles, light fixtures, switches, and low voltage panels.  We completed and tested the hydronic systems: solar thermal system, boiler loop, and radiant floor heating.  We installed the Dome 1 ceiling fan, wired for remote direction reversal, and installed all of the motorized window shades.  We finished the Solatube daylight system, which now illuminates the bathroom during the entire day.  We had Corian kitchen and bathroom countertops cut and installed, and finished all plumbing.  We ground out the larger cracks in our floor, filled them with epoxy, sanded all floors, and painted them.  The most satisfying milestone reaching during this trip, however, was that we passed our final inspection.  The house is now legally habitable!

2021 and early 2022 saw the completion of the interior of the domes as well as construction of the final building on the Domes site: a utility hub and garage. We also made progress on some landscaping as we work to integrate the domes structures with the natural environment.

Joining the Project

This project is a collective endeavor, and I am extremely grateful for the amazing work that many folks have put into this over the years. If you’d like to join the project, and thereby become part of the collective (enabling you to utilize the house whenever you’d like in the future), just let me know!

In August and September 2022 I’ll be working on a solar thermal upgrade and the interior plumbing and wiring for the new utility building. In December 2022 I’ll be finishing the utility building and fully wiring the “Brain” that controls all of the sensors and actuators at the domes. In January 2023, Jess will be finishing the exterior path and decorative masonry.