Dome Houses

Visionary David South’s eccentric dome houses are not stylish. But they are fireproof, impervious to tornadoes and earthquakes, and dirt cheap. They just might be the answer to Dallas’ crisis in affordable family housing. that is, if you don’t mind living under a gigantic pumpkin.

Dome Houses - PC DomesSouth of Waxahachie, the buildings scattered under the vast sky look tentative—a trailer under a few trees, a prefab church vaunting a Purpose and Destiny Center. A few miles down Interstate Highway 35, an unfinished house stands vacant in a field near pinewoods, all work obviously halted months, perhaps years, before. Even the wooden fence surrounding it, held up by angled two-by-fours, looks like what you’d see behind the false front on a movie set.

Take me, take us all, these slapdash constructions seem to be calling to the god of storms, and it’s easy to imagine, against these horizons, some feral, soot-black twister dragging its apocalyptic hunger along the land and consuming every jerry-built scrap of them.

Monolithic Dome Institute Founder and President David South. Like mushrooms or pumpkins, experimental domes of various sizes cluster on the Institute’s campus.

Source: http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-home/2006/october/dome-houses