The More You Know

How The Earthy History of Dome Homes Is Influencing Design Now

From R. Buckminster Fuller to Kanye West, the dome remains an inspiring symbol of a more sustainable future

What most Americans know about dome homes has—like many topics outside our individual areas of expertise—been gleaned from popular culture. Whether it’s Spaceship Earth (the giant golf ball-like geosphere that has become the symbol of Disney World’s EPCOT theme park), Luke Skywalker’s teenage home on the planet Tatooine from the Star Wars franchise, or any number of residential and commercial buildings in the city of Bedrock on The Flintstones, dome construction immediately lets audiences know that they’ve stepped out of the present and into either the distant past or someone’s vision of the future.

Over the years, that perception of dome houses has bled out of pop culture and into real life. As a population that has lived most, if not all of our lives in a series of rectangles, the thought of making a round space our home may seem odd, whimsical, or impractical. But compared to the attempt to make dome houses the next big thing in architecture in the mid-20th century, those making the case for them now do so with an even greater sense of urgency.

The main selling points of dome structures have largely remained the same—they’re relatively simple to construct, low-cost to build and maintain, and can withstand strong winds and some earthquakes—but the circumstances have changed. Human-accelerated climate change is no longer a hypothetical; it’s our reality, and it’s forcing us to rethink how and where we build our homes. This now includes the materials we use and the types of housing we construct.

Which brings us back to the dome. Here’s everything you need to know about these round structures, including a brief introduction to some of the earlier forms and construction methods, why we don’t see dome houses lining suburban streets alongside ranches and bungalows, and how domes are continuing to influence sustainable architecture.

The beehive houses specific to the region of Harran in Sanliurfa-Turkey.

Photo: Getty Images

Early examples of homes in the shape of domes

Though a few 20th-century architects and engineers are often credited with introducing—or even inventing—dome structures, they’ve been around much longer. Many Indigenous peoples throughout the world have been constructing different types of dome dwellings for hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years, using whatever building materials were readily available, including adobe, loam, mud bricks, wood, stones, and animal hides and bones.

Generally speaking, while many mobile peoples made dome-shaped huts out of a frame of wooden poles covered in grass, brush, peat moss, or animal hides, some hunter-gatherers opted for more permanent dome dwellings, like beehive huts, wigwams/wickiups, and wetu. In addition to a population’s lifestyle and the available building materials, these early dome houses also varied depending on the time period of their construction, the climate at the time, and evolving cultures and traditions. For example, archaeologists have excavated sites throughout Central and Eastern Europe, where the curved bones of multiple mammoths were used to construct dome houses as far back as 22,000 years ago—a strategy for staying warm during the Ice Age.

Today, there are the domed huts the Mousgoum people have been building in the floodplain on the Cameroon-Chad border since settling there three centuries ago. The thick walls made of mud and clay are highly textured, with veins that allow for water to easily drain off the house during heavy rain. Along with North American examples like Navajo hogans and Inuit igloos, another type of dome dwelling could be found in parts of the United States throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The round barn—which could be octagonal, polygonal, or genuinely circular, and often topped with a dome-like roof—enjoyed mild popularity largely in the Midwest until the beginning of the 1930s. (And, of course, these housed livestock rather than humans.)

So what happened? Why didn’t domes endure? Though there are many reasons for that, one stands out to Dana Fortune, a history teacher (and creator of the Alternative Housing series on TikTok) whose research focuses on the past, present, and future of sustainable housing. “We can see beautiful examples of dome housing across many cultures past and present, but with the rise of the Second Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, traditional building methods were increasingly replaced by steel, brick, and cement,” Dana tells Clever. “The art and knowledge of building our own homes and communities was lost to many of us.”

The Montreal Biosphere designed by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1967.

Photo: DeAgostini/Getty Images

A 20th century vision of the future

If you know the name of one architect associated with dome buildings, it’s probably R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983). He was also an inventor, philosopher, and engineer, and throughout his five-decade career, he aimed to use his skill set to develop architectural designs and construction methods that looked to nature for design inspiration, maximized all materials, and had minimal impact on the surrounding natural environment.

But of all of his inventions and architectural innovations (28 of which were awarded patents), the one Buckminster is best known for is the geodesic dome: a spherical structure, constructed with a series of triangles forming hexagons and pentagons, that is lightweight, energy efficient, and incredibly strong.

Technically, a German engineer named Walther Bauersfeld built the world’s first geodesic dome in 1926: the Zeiss Planetarium in Jena, Germany. It was Buckminster, however, who coined the term “geodesic dome,” and brought attention to the design when he first presented and patented it in 1954. Thirteen years later, he designed the United States exhibition dome at Expo 67 (the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair), which is now called the Montreal Biosphere, and serves as a museum.

Even with the international spotlight and all the press attention from Expo 67, the geodesic dome never took off the way Buckminster hoped it would. The Buckminster Fuller Institute estimates that since their introduction, around 300,000 geodesic domes have been constructed around the world; a large number, but only a tiny fraction of all structures built in that time.

Not all modern dome houses have been geodesic. Some 20th-century architects, instead, opted to design updated versions of monolithic domes, in which the outermost shell of the home is made of a single layer of a hard material, like concrete. The most famous of these were Wallace Neff’s “bubble houses.”

An early “architect to the stars,” Wallace spent the 1920s and 1930s designing homes for Hollywood royalty like Judy Garland and all three Marx brothers, and redesigning Pickfair, the home of silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Despite the attention he received for these commissions, Wallace is best remembered for his domed bubble houses, created using a method he called “Airform construction.” The process involved anchoring a giant balloon to the foundation, inflating it, covering it in chicken wire, then spraying it with extra-strong concrete called gunite. When the concrete was dry, the balloon was deflated, et voilà: a dome house constructed in approximately 48 hours.

Wallace saw bubble homes and his Airform construction method as a potential solution to the postwar global housing crisis, thanks to their resiliency in even extreme weather, requiring no wood or nails, and being relatively fast, simple, and inexpensive to construct. At first, others shared his enthusiasm. Between 1941 and Wallace’s death in 1982, plans were made to construct approximately 400,000 bubble houses around the world. Fewer than 2,500 were actually built.

Only one bubble house is still standing in the United States: Wallace’s former home in Pasadena, California. But there are others still in existence in parts of the Middle East and Africa, with the highest concentration in Dakar, Senegal—the remnants of what was once a community of 1,200 bubble houses.

So many selling points, but still a hard sell

As present-day architects search for ways to make both new and existing structures more sustainable, some are looking to dome houses for inspiration. According to David Thompson, the founder and design principal at Assembledge+, a firm specializing in designing sustainable structures using eco-friendly technologies, the influence of dome houses has extended far beyond their midcentury heyday. “The elegant efficiency of the solutions—say, Fuller’s geodesic lattice, or Neff’s inflatable formwork—sets the standard for innovation,” he explains. “Such efficiency is also ecologically relevant.”

To start, the rounded shape makes dome houses more energy efficient than traditionally shaped homes, lowering both heating and cooling costs, Dana notes. Dome houses can also be built faster, using fewer materials and resources than traditional housing. Although some form of concrete is still often used to create a home’s outer shell, Dana says that there are also more sustainable options, including natural earth materials like adobe, bamboo, straw, or mud, as well as modern concrete replacements like hemp and mycelium.

Part of what makes dome homes so sustainable lies in their design. “The dome shape evenly distributes stress without supporting columns or walls, making them surprisingly strong,” adds Dana. This means that domes have the ability to withstand most meteorological and geological events, including extreme temperatures, wind, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfires. Not having to frequently rebuild or repair the home cuts down on the consumption (and cost) of building materials, as well as the energy used during reconstruction, she notes.

Yet, despite these benefits, the dome’s secure place in pop culture, and a 1971 New York Times article declaring that “the dome as a home is catching on,” this housing model has never managed to go mainstream—at least not in the United States. After all, the houses that most Americans draw as children (and then dream of moving into as adults) tend to look rectilinear. In a 2014 column for CBS News, real estate journalist Ilyce Glink wrote that “the dome home is an oddity, and despite the great strides the industry has made in mixing in common architectural elements to smooth out the dome’s unique look, there is no hiding the distinct look of a curved building that the eye thinks should be square.”

Since launching her TikTok series on alternative housing, it’s become very clear to Dana that a lot of people are genuinely interested in more sustainable homes (including ones with domes), but have never been presented with them as a viable option. On top of that, she says that when you factor in the necessary permits, zoning, and insurance, these homes—that were meant to be affordable and accessible housing solutions—become inaccessible for the average person.

“As a history teacher, I think it comes down to a general lack of knowledge about these options even existing, as well as the stigma attached to dome housing and earth housing as ‘primitive,’” Dana further explains. Without the opportunity to regularly see and learn about dome houses, it’s easy for many of us to dismiss domes as either futuristic curiosities, or so archaic that they belong in natural history museum dioramas rather than present-day neighborhoods.

Along the same lines, the round design of dome houses also requires a massive shift in lifestyle—something American homeowners haven’t exactly embraced until recently. “The open space floor plan, while leaving room for creativity and customization, was unfamiliar in the U.S., although common elsewhere,” Dana adds. “If the dome is built out of concrete, the walls are harder to decorate, furniture can’t be pushed against walls as easily, and resale value was a concern.”

What dome homes can teach us about sustainability

It remains to be seen whether dome houses will ever make the leap from architectural outsider to cul-de-sac regular, but it’s clear that in order for that to happen, it has to be the right project in the right hands. Among those attempting to make dome houses happen is Kanye West, who previously funded the construction of four prototype dome homes called “Yeezy Shelters” on a 300-acre parcel of land in Los Angeles that he hoped to turn into a utopian community of affordable and sustainable housing. (His inspiration for the design? Luke Skywalker’s former home, as he told Forbes in a 2019 interview.)

Though the Yeezy Shelters were torn down by September 2019 following noise complaints from neighbors (and because he allegedly didn’t secure the necessary building permits), Kanye tweeted that his project was back on track the following year—now taking the form of an “eco-village/children’s ranch” called Birthday Lake, which would also feature Yeezy Shelters. While Kanye hasn’t said much about Birthday Lake since then, he confirmed that the “domes [are] staying up this time” in another tweet.

For now, SuperAdobe dome homes are at the forefront of sustainability, affordability, and scalability. This form of architecture involves arranging long sandbags filled with moistened soil into coils, which are then stacked into a dome-shaped structure. Architect and philosopher Nader Khalili developed SuperAdobe after spending five years in the mid-1970s traveling through the Iranian desert, learning homebuilding techniques from Indigenous people living in the region, Vogue reported back in 2018.

In 1984, Nader presented his intentionally simple construction and design at a NASA conference, and the agency took notice, hiring him to help develop housing for future human settlements on Mars and the moon. He went on to found the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (CalEarth), in 1991, where he taught his earth architecture methods, as well as his ethics-centered approach to the discipline: Using sustainable materials and design to work towards housing equity.

Since then, the CalEarth campus in Hesperia has remained a center for education, research, and development, including after Nader’s death in 2008. Currently, much of the research at CalEarth is focused on how SuperAdobe homes fare during seismic events and under extreme climate conditions. But regardless of the variables, according to an overview of the research on the CalEarth website, one finding has been consistent: “that the strength in the geometry of the arch is unmatched.”

While SuperAdobe dome houses haven’t yet made it to Mars, they can be found in at least 49 countries on six continents throughout this planet, including South Africa, Australia, Venezuela, Hungary, Oman, Algeria, and Japan.

Another angle of the lounge area under the dome in the L.A. studio apartment.

Photo: Ye Rin Mok

Looking to the past for solutions to present-day problems

But will dome homes ever catch on in the United States? With nearly four million people in the country reporting some form of housing insecurity, there is certainly a need for affordable options, and for some, these more sustainable, lower-cost dome homes may fit the bill. Having said that, not everyone has access to the land necessary to build any type of home, let alone the financial means to purchase the raw materials or prefabricated home kit required to construct their own dome house. (Prices of the kits vary, but as an example, one for a 269-square-foot home with fittings included costs around $13,000.)

For those on the other end of the financial spectrum, David proposes that dome homes may gain some ground as outbuildings, rather than primary residences. “For example, in Los Angeles, changes to the zoning code have produced a boom in the construction of accessory dwelling units,” he explains. “For these projects, homeowners have shown increased willingness to choose low-cost, fixed designs. As such, the door to the dome house is still open.”

The good news is that while the technology used to construct and equip dome homes will continue to advance, when it comes to the basic design, the proverbial heavy lifting has already been done. “What excites me most is that the solutions to more sustainable and affordable housing options already exist,” Dana concludes. “Luckily, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make better choices for people and the planet—we can seek Indigenous knowledge and look to the past.”