During the 1940s, a US inventor named Richard Buckminster Fuller wanted to reinvent the concept of shelter or home, or what one calls a geodesic dome home.
He spent most of his work looking for ways to make living sustainable, as well as more convenient.
The American Institute of Architects calls his work as “the strongest, lightest and most efficient means of enclosing space known to man.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller contributed a lot to the convenience of the US Marine Corps by creating domes that were transportable via helicopter.
This helped them in covering their turfs, as well as for storage purposes.
He championed the innovation of a geodesic dome home during the duration of his career, and his practices are still being implemented until this day.
The geodesic dome is able to cover more space without internal supports than any other enclosure. The larger it is, the lighter and stronger it is proportionally.
This design is a breakthrough in the shelter, not only in cost-effectiveness, but in ease of construction and energy efficiency. The geometry allows for proper circulation of the ambient air with little energy input.
In fact, The Hjertefølgers have been living at The Arctic Circle, specifically in Sandhornøya island in Norway, inside a geodesic dome home.
Their house was built to surpass all extreme weather conditions that comes with living in the Arctic, making their geodesic dome home a sustainable place to live in.
Their three-story cob home—built from sand, water, clay, and other organic materials—is encased in an aesthetically pleasing, and functional, solar geodesic dome by Solardome.
Because of the 25-foot-high dome that surrounded their home, the Hjertefølgers were protected from heavy snow loads and strong winds. The existence of the dome also helped in cutting down heating expenses.
Since the dome is large enough to cover a garden area, making the space emit more greenhouse gases to grow their food without sunlight. Some of what they grow are: tomatoes, cucumber, herbs, melons, squash, and many more.
“We love the house; it has a soul of its own and it feels very personal. What surprises us is the fact that we built ourselves anew as we built the house,” Ingrid Hjertefølger told Inhabitat.
“The process changed us, shaped us… The atmosphere is unique. The house has a calmness; I can almost hear the stillness.”
“It is hard to explain. But it would have been impossible to get this feeling from a house someone else has planned and built for us, or a house with corners and straight lines.”
The Hjertefølgers, with the help of this sustainable and efficient innovation has proved to us that the concept of living does not have to be in a standard house, in a typical suburban area.
With this type of technology, people can have the option to stay away from the norms, and live a quiet life outside of the noise, and the hustle and bustle. If you were given the chance to live in a geodesic dome home, would you?
Take a virtual tour inside this unique home:
Source story: h/t: Inhabitat