Word: domes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...round is not exactly new. Cave dwellers, Kurds, birds, bees, Bedouins, medieval Irish monks, Indians, Eskimos, Zulus, lighthouse keepers and leprechauns, to name a few, have tried it. But it took the genius of R. Buckminster Fuller, now 81, whose brilliantly engineered structures were used as radar domes on the arctic DEW line after World War II, to demonstrate conclusively that for the material used they are the strongest and most efficient way to enclose space. Moreover, they cover maximum volume with minimum surface area. Ergo, it takes less energy to heat or cool a spherical structure than the rectilinear...
Tate Miller, one of Cathedralite's three young co-owners, estimates that the energy bill for a dome home ranges between one-third and one-half of that for a conventional house with the same floor space. John and Martha Evensta, a physician and his wife who have a five-room, $40,000 dome in Grand Rapids, Minn., say that their highest monthly electricity bill, in subzero January, came to $91-which included not only heating but also power for all their household appliances. The Evenstas' house is mainly heated by a wood-burning furnace backed...
Life in a globe is not always a ball. Domes have had a bad reputation for leaking, though manufacturers claim that this should be no problem if the home is finished by an expert roofer. They are apt to be noisy, since they usually have few of the interior partitions that muffle sound in a traditional structure. Fitting rectangular furniture into a round house also poses problems; many dome dwellers build in tubs, beds and cabinets shaped to fit the walls...
...perennial headache is the exotic structures' attraction for curiosity seekers and peckers. Bill Woods, who manufactures hardware for geodesics in Phoenix, and lives with his family in three connected domes, recalls looking up from dinner one night to find three people peering in one window, two at another and two more at the door trying to get in. Uninvited guests do not, however, bother Manhattan Businessman Henry Hansenberg and his wife, Interior Decorator Mara Gardner. They have erected a dome studio on their penthouse duplex overlooking Central Park...
Another problem: mortgage financing has been hard to get for domes. However, most builders today agree that loans are usually available for professionally built models; some bankers cite the energy savings as an important plus. The few contractor-built domes that have been resold have brought high prices. The manufacturers claim that dome builders have no trouble getting building permits. Ironically, say the Cathedralite owners, the only city where their earthquake-resistant dwellings have run afoul of local building and safety requirements is Los Angeles...