15 ms·

Japanese Dome House

188 points by traverseda 5y ago

kadomony 5y ago
Is this how Capsule Corps starts? Goku, where you at?
fortran77 5y ago
See also concrete dome homes: https://www.monolithic.org/domes https://www.monolithic.org/domes We were looking into concrete domes for building a home in Florida. We got cold feet when we couldn't find a contractor who would work in our area that had any experience with this procedure. I still would love to live in a "dome home".
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I would too. But I understand that, like A-frames, adapting vertical furniture, cabinets, etc. to walls that are not 90-degree vertical can be problematic. So you add vertical walls inside ... and then you're losing space.
  - fortran77 5y ago
    Yes, of course. You'd have to be prepared for 100% custom furnishings inside.
    - antisthenes 5y ago
      And of course be prepared for the price tag that comes with the 100% custom furnishings. Knowing American labor costs, it'll cost an arm and a leg.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Reminds me a bit of this: https://www.rogerdean.com/home-for-life/ https://www.rogerdean.com/home-for-life/ I know that someone built one, somewhere, last century. It involved, basically, a heavy-duty “chicken wire” frame, with sprayed-on concrete.
ginko 5y ago
>World's first! The fourth new material following wood, iron, and concrete. ..and stone, and brick, and glass, and adobe, and straw, and fabric..
- Lhiw 5y ago
  ... and dirt/mud.
  - traverseda 5y ago
    Adobe was already mentioned.
- nagisa 5y ago
  Not to mention that polystyrene is very widely used as an insulation material for regular box-shaped houses today. Sure, not load bearing, but I would trust a wooden or concrete structure for load bearing much more than a polystyrene one, anyway. (Not to mention that polystyrene does not have any of the sustainability – which is all the rage nowadays – benefits either)
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It is actually used in load bearing applications as well, EPS parts can be made with up to 60 psi load carrying capacity (which borders on magic to me).
- jojobas 5y ago
  Paper. It's Japan after all.
edge17 5y ago
Domes see expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Makes me wonder why we always assumed the moon colonies of the future would be exotic looking architecture rather than boring and easy to upkeep.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Biosphere vs biocube
  - wirthjason 5y ago
    Bio-dome, Buuuddee! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-Dome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-Dome
- analog31 5y ago
  Probably same reason why pipes are round, and propane tanks are hemispherical on the ends. Under pressure / vacuum, corners are stress risers, and flat sheets have to be supported.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  They have great properties around wind flow and structural support of the roof system. In a concrete dome house, the roof and the vertical supports are one continuous structure - so no more hurricane blowing off your roof. The building technique is exotic but not hard - one approach is to inflate a plastic sheet into a dome shape and the. spray concrete on the inside to build up the outer shell. Check out this example, which keeps the open garage on the ground floor so that there’s less load from wind on the structure and so the living quarters won’t get flooded: https://youtu.be/n7CjYhKBjtU https://youtu.be/n7CjYhKBjtU
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Much easier to pressurize and keep airtight than something with 90 degree angles. That's why the ISS is shaped the way it is, cylinders joined with circular joints.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Compare to geofoam:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofoam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofoam In particular the use of geofoam at Chicago's Millenium park: https://www.insulfoam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/april-16-update_job-site-camera.jpg https://www.insulfoam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/april-1... In the specific case of Millenium Park it makes some intuitive sense since there's a parking garage beneath it that can only bear so much weight. For individual homes, I'm not convinced. I'm probably just ignorant of polystyrene's properties and the tradeoffs relative to other materials, but I'm worried about it just kind of hanging around in the environment as buildings degrade. Concrete, steel, and glass do that, I suppose, but in a less displeasing way...
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Geofoam and this: microplastic leeching sites for the next 100 years.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    Yep, I'm concerned about this--though I'm no expert.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Polystyrene filler for concrete foundations is pretty much how it is done these days.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    Filler? I've seen foam inside/outside the concrete for insulation, but as a filler...as in replacing aggregate in the concrete?
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      You can do that too to reduce the density of the concrete and to increase the insulation value but what you're more likely to encounter is to have the foundation layered in foam slabs and then concrete poured over the top for a good mixture of strength and insulation. The styrofoam insulates and because the concrete and the foam are in contact it also helps to diffuse loads. Some pictures: https://fpmccann.co.uk/portfolio-items/thermabeam/ https://fpmccann.co.uk/portfolio-items/thermabeam/ Insulated foundations set on foam: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/placing-a-concrete-foundation-on-rigid-foam-insulation https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/placing-a-concr... The main reason is to fully insulate the thermal mass of the house from the surroundings. I see this happen around here all the time and even though I understand the basics I'm still not sure that I would like the house that I own and have a good chunk of my saving in built like that because of the long term compression of the foam. I'd be worry about uneven compression and cracks or other foundation issues. But it's really very common.
CatsEyes 5y ago
Free golf ball facade after first hailstorm!
- jacquesm 5y ago
  You can use concrete loaded with an x percentage of styrofoam as a filler to get something approaching dial-a-density. As you add more foam the insulating properties get better but it gets structurally weaker. Ideally you'd layer your densities, more solid on the outside, more foam on the inside. That would also make affixing things and joining the panels easier.
throwawayay02 5y ago
DragonBall was ahead of it's time.
geolqued 5y ago
Youtuber Chris Broad "Abroad in Japan" visits these domes in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE
- daemonhunter 5y ago
  Too much volcano! Was going to comment a link to his video as well.
miralize 5y ago
Good 99% episode on this style of house. Very hard to decorate and furnish https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/
jacquesm 5y ago
These have been built since the 70's, the quickest constructions were essentially inflated balloons that concrete loaded with Styrofoam was spread over, after curing the balloons were deflated and used for the next unit. Pretty similar construction here, tons of other examples (really, too many to even list) in various publications: https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/foam-dome-zmaz80mjzraw https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/foam-dome-zmaz80... I really do not see the novelty.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  The original idea dates back to the sixties: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216984
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    30's.
- svdr 5y ago
  The Barbapapa family built their house like this in the 70's as well: https://live.staticflickr.com/1787/42134502335_045815b1ee_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/1787/42134502335_045815b1ee_b....
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure if I dig back enough I'll be able to find stuff from the 60's with rapid dome construction based on styrofoam and concrete in it. It is definitely an interesting way to construct things, I know of a company that uses styrofoam loaded concrete for the fabrication of window frames for brick houses and there are probably a lot of other current applications for that. Domes have - since Buckminster Fuller, really - been built from all kinds of materials, this is one of the more interesting combinations because it at least does away with all of the nasty seems at nasty angles that a 'normal' geodesic dome has. But some of the problems remain: windows and doors will always require either a special panel or be a bad match for the rest of the dome. The floorplan will pretty much ensure that there aren't any right angles anywhere, so furniture such as bookcases and such (but hey, who needs books... ok, wardrobes) will have to be custom made or placed inefficiently, or all around the center of the dome where they will have a big impact on light. It's a super elegant concept, but it has problems. I built a small (8 meter diameter) dome in Canada as a spot to sit near the river that ran through our property, we didn't really get around to finishing it (just foil over wood & steel) but it blended in nicely, in a way that very little other buildings would and for that reason alone I'd love to build another one here in NL. But the problems with the shape have so far withheld me from doing it. It might also work well as an office. https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/the-restoration-of-buckminster-fullers-dome-home-kicks-off-saturday_o https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/the-restoration... Higher number of panels will approximate the dome shape better, will be easier to put up by a single individual, but will also cause more length of seam and hence more chance of springing a leak or rot in case of woodwork in the panels.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
I don't see specs (or prices); that always makes me suspicious. It looks like they're looking for developers to pay for 100's of these at a time, so this clearly isn't an option for a typical contractor or home build. How does it handle fire? Earthquakes? Wind? I see that the panels are joined; have there been stress or pressure tests for leaks? And how difficult/expensive are repairs? Does the surface attract mold? It seems like a safer bet would be to use this material as a combination sheeting+insulation in traditional homes, but I'll bet it's more expensive, so they're trying to sell it as a complete solution to throw out the costs of foundation and framing.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
Neat, reminds me a bit of the "lego style" construction method of this company: https://gablok.com/en/ https://gablok.com/en/
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Oh that's nice! I actually had an idea for this on the drawing board at some time, great to see that it has been done. The blocks I had in mind were more universal though, and easy to put together with just hand tools, these look like they would be nice to create using a CNC driven block factory, a bit like a roofing company makes joists using a CNC driven chopsaw.
lemoncookiechip 5y ago
These have been featured at least twice in the Abroad in Japan channel on YT. Chris Broad (the host) and his friends even spent the night in them. The atmosphere and scenery are quite something. Here's one of the videos showcasing the Igloo house during one of his Journey Across Japan series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
goodpoint 5y ago
The environmental benefits could be negated by the very low urban density achieved. People use cars like crazy when living in a sprawl.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Not to mention, polystyrene is a significant portion of our plastic waste problem. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318854130_An_overview_on_biodegradation_of_polystyrene_and_modified_polystyrene_the_microbial_approach https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318854130_An_overvi...
marcodiego 5y ago
Very similar to the houses in phantasy star: https://blogtectoy.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/phantasy_star-e1479408150765.jpg https://blogtectoy.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/phantas...
daneel_w 5y ago
I presume it will melt, like any other expanded polystyrene, the very second it reaches 100° Celsius.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  No, the concrete it appears to be embedded in should stop that from happening, it is essentially a hollow panel at this stage with a dense concrete surface layer. That's also why then can have those tensional elements in it, if you tried that with 100% styrofoam it wouldn't do anything other than rip the elements apart.
  - daneel_w 5y ago
    I doubt it. Neither plaster nor cement are ideal thermal insulators, and 100° Celsius is not much in the context of a raging fire. I don't think a fire will need much time to deform the EPS panels in these buildings.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      I've worked a bit with woodpanels insulated with styrofoam embedded within concrete. They weren't nearly as fireproof as brick or full reinforced concrete but compared reasonably well with just woodframe or steel (which was the worst of the lot). As you already observed, it's all about the insulation, and even though the foam itself may melt the concrete will survive the initial roasting and that just leaves you with a bunch of gaps in the concrete which makes it insulate much better than solid concrete would. You'd have to set up a proper test to determine the amount of insulation you'd have to add (I'd absolutely hate to have to drywall a surface like this). One way to do it would be to stucco the inside. But depending on the thickness of the walls you might not need much to achieve the amount of structural integrity required by the fire code, these are not going to be multi level buildings anyway. Edit: I did some more digging and found this image on their website: http://www.i-domehouse.com/product_type/img/01-04_2.jpg http://www.i-domehouse.com/product_type/img/01-04_2.jpg So it appears that the foam core is just foam, nothing else, so there is no interior structure other than the styrofoam. This won't pass building code or fire code for structural integrity anywhere that I've ever built something. I can see them using these for emergency shelters but not for permanent occupation without more internal structure. They do show a resort built with these, I wonder where it is and what kind of building code they operate under. The cement backing is just a thin layer applied to the outside of the panels, so indeed, when they get too hot the interior will melt and then you're just looking at two thin bits of cement without any kind of reinforcement. It would likely collapse immediately if they did not take any precautions. Fire safety is not something I could find any information on in their pages, they do mention excellent earthquake resistance, which I totally believe.
tzs 5y ago
I once worked in an office building that was a two story geodesic dome. It was mostly OK, except that the curved walls could be annoying especially on the second floor. I had a second floor office and it was hard to find good use for the space against the outside wall. Anything tall, like a bookshelf or lamp, had to be quite a ways out from the base of the wall to get enough vertical room. A desk would have fit in that space, but who wants a desk facing the wall away from the door so you are working with you back to anyone who enters your office? I ended up putting a couch there. Unless you were quite tall there was little chance of accidentally bopping your head when trying to sit down or get up, and it only took the tall people a couple of hits to learn to be careful. :-) Domes are cool looking on the outside, but require care to make work on the inside. They probably work better as houses than office buildings, because the designer of a house can better anticipate what each room will be used for and arrange it so that things you'd naturally want against outside walls are things that would be OK with the curves. An office building has a lot more variability from tenant to tenant, making it more likely that the tenant's things won't work well against the curved walls. My main concern if I was considering a dome for a house would be maintenance and repairs. For example if it has a shingled roof and developed a leak could any average roofing company deal with it, or would I be looking at calling in specialists? Probably best for a dome to get one that is not essentially a conventional building in dome shape, like the office building we were in, but rather something like the domes in the article.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Do you have a streetview link to this building, I'd love to see it?
  - tzs 5y ago
    Here's the one we had offices in [1]. The same builder built a couple more in the same town at around the same time (late '80s) [2]. Here's a link to the first building at the county parcel search site, showing a photo and drawing with floor dimensions and area [3], and with links to all kinds of other details. Looks like it was last sold a few months ago for $365k in case anyone is curious about how much such a building is worth. That's not bad for an almost 4000 sq ft building. Here's the parcel search link for the smaller one at the second location [4], and here is the link for the larger one at the second location [5]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7538416,-122.665396,3a,60y,138.76h,89.2t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sd47pZUC4rGWQ6d5CS4uVJQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7538416,-122.665396,3a,60y,1... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7433177,-122.6567975,3a,60y,110.58h,81.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srmg6r38jT1ONFF9iXrwEmA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7433177,-122.6567975,3a,60y,... [3] https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossketches&parcel=1329044 https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossk... [4] https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossketches&parcel=1336197 https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossk... [5] https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossketches&parcel=1995000 https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossk...
GuB-42 5y ago
Ok, what's the catch? We see new ideas for home building all the time, dome shaped, 3D printed, using shipping containers, etc... and yet, everyone in the world still builds vaguely box shaped buildings with wood, bricks or concrete. All these new things tend to have issues with at least one of condensation, insulation, overall cost, convenience, weatherproofing, local availability of materials, durability, safety, etc... Dome houses are far from a new idea, neither are plastic houses, I have never seen them except as a novelty or experiment. I don't know what's wrong with them, but if there were good, we would probably see more of them. Modern construction techniques are well optimized and adapted to the local environment, using several layers, with materials serving a specific function like structural integrity, insulation or weatherproofing, with good value. If you want to sound fancy, you can call it composite materials.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  One problem I see is the same problem I see when considering a greenhouse with vertical walls or a hoophouse with curved walls. Vertical walls don’t waste space. In a hoop house or these dome houses there will be weird parts all around the edge that aren’t very tall that could be considered wasted space.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  The catch is that curved edges are a pain in the ass to fit furniture in, and varying sizes of dome homes have different curve angles, so you can't just make standard "curved" furniture. An box is a box regardless of size, and any couch fits against any flat wall. Sectional couches now let you customize the size to fit bigger or smaller boxes. Unless you get a lot of custom pieces, you can lose a lot of space or end up with awkward and ugly situations, so it really only works for people who have the time and resources to spend on custom interior design. Because of all this, resale of the home can be difficult, because your market is limited to the small community of people Perhaps as 3d and custom manufacturing becomes more commonplace and price competitive with assembly line products, there will be more of an appetite for the amount of customization that these kinds of homes require.
  - 5y ago
anonporridge 5y ago
Monolithic has been doing this in the US for years, https://www.monolithic.org/homes https://www.monolithic.org/homes. It's disappointing that it hasn't caught on, but there are practical reasons that make the design difficult despite it's greater efficiencies and resilience.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  These are using dense concrete though, the ones from the article use a 100% foam core with thin layers of concrete on the outside and zero reinforcement or other structural components that I can detect. I really like the Monolithic domes, they seem like the most practical way of constructing such a structure. No seams just what you need, no more and no less and a very mature process, far ahead of the company in the article in terms of applicability, all you need to ship from the factory is the inflatables, concrete you can make on-site.
chefandy 5y ago
Looks like a great base structure for your new moisture farm.
getpost 5y ago
This reminds me of Wallace Neff's Airform houses, which were built using pneumatic forms and spray-on concrete. https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/airform-bubble-house https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/airform-bubble-house https://www.mortarsprayer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Wallace-Neff.pdf https://www.mortarsprayer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Wal...
traverseda 5y ago
Please note that they actually make a lot of non-dome buildings using this set of technology.
dr-detroit 5y ago
Not even joking this isnt a japanese website they dont do all this goofy jQuery stuff in Japan
wiradikusuma 5y ago
I guess the natural next step is to squeeze it into a capsule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xnE3MQXWy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xnE3MQXWy0
bschwindHN 5y ago
I see they found the same photographer every Japanese real-estate company uses to take some shitty jpegs of the installation, nice!
mnemotronic 5y ago
Any outgassing from the synthetic material, the adhesive of the sealants? How well does it stand up to 100 mph winds or golfball size hail? How well can it resist UV at 8200 ft ASL?
Animats 5y ago
There's a version of this where you inflate a dome-shaped balloon to a moderately high pressure, and then spray foamed concrete on it.[1] Once the foam sets, you deflate the balloon, and you have a dome. There were door and window modules built to fit this. Works OK, not very popular. The overall effect is that of a Quonset hut. Works OK, used by militaries worldwide, few people live in them by choice. [1] https://foamconcreteworld.com/dome-houses/ https://foamconcreteworld.com/dome-houses/
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Yes, heard about these from 99% Invisible podcast “bubble houses” [0], design originated by hollywood architect Wallace Neff who got it in his head that rapid construction of bubble houses could be a boon to homelessness It’s also simular in principal to Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti and Cosanti - really cool technique where you build a form in sand, pour concrete, and then excavate the sand out to reveal the dome. You can get beautiful organic forms this way, simply carving shapes and even painting the sand - pigment will be picked up by the concrete as it cures [1] [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/ [1] https://www.gypsyandthenavigator.com/2019/06/arcosantithe-city-of-the-future-that-time-seems-to-forget.html https://www.gypsyandthenavigator.com/2019/06/arcosantithe-ci...
kortex 5y ago
I don't understand the appeal of domes compared to cylinders and other rounded extrusions. You still have the complexity of round interfaces but at least the outer surface has zero Gaussian curvature (you can wrap it with a sheet). Negative curvature (hyperboloids) can "cheat" and use a net of straight lines, so that also has nice properties. But, positive curvature surfaces (spherica and geodesic domes) require compound curvature everywhere. See also the complaints elsewhere about space utilization. I guess they look cool, that is their main feature. They also seem good for tensile structures (inflated domes) and massive self-supporting spaces. But you can also get most of those properties with extrusions, which are way simpler to fabricate.
epicureanideal 5y ago
This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see more of if we deregulated the building industry. A handful of friends could put up a house like the one shown in this article pretty quickly and cheaply. See also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29224482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29224482 > > There is one issue with the developers - they have less incentive to build enough homes to actually drive down prices via market forces because it means less profit for them. > People were building their own homes for centuries before there were "developers". I would argue that over-regulation has made it extremely difficult for small builders or family builders to attempt to build their own homes. Only large corporations with a legal team can run that gauntlet. > If regulation were reduced, we'd probably see a lot more small time builders, or people taking classes to learn how to build their own homes, cooperatives being set up (possibly organized through Y Combinator startups dedicated to that) where people could Amish-style bring a community together to build homes.
- officeplant 5y ago
  >I would argue that over-regulation has made it extremely difficult for small builders or family builders to attempt to build their own homes. Only large corporations with a legal team can run that gauntlet. A difficult balance of: People should be able to build things themselves cheaply and efficiently Things should meet some sort of code and not cause greater harm to the area or others. (edited for clarity)
bemmu 5y ago
When travel opens up again and you find yourself taking a trip to Japan, come visit Wakayama's Toretore Village: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6797444,135.3761989,3a,75y,82.47h,81.55t https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6797444,135.3761989,3a,75y,8... You can stay in one of the dome rooms in what feels a bit like a Smurf village.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Those look like they have been made by the same manufacturer.
kabuks 5y ago
See also zomes.com and geoship.is
jahller 5y ago
this is just straight out of Dragonball: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dragonball/images/f/fe/Goku%27s_house_Super.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20201025110835 https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dragonball/images/f/fe/Gok...
anthk 5y ago
Now do Hoi-Poi capsules.
einpoklum 5y ago
So, obviously this would not fit an urban area where you want multiple stories etc. Also, I wonder whether it's sufficiently wind-resistant. Is there no chance of it being ripped from the ground? Ignoring the above - this might be useful for temporary construction of dwellings for refugees in a crisis or natural catastrophe. Much better than tents and probably cheaper and easier to set up than those shipping-container-like prefabricated dwellings I remember from years ago. So... maybe the UN would be a big client? Or governments in crisis zones?
rdevsrex 5y ago
I'd much rather see ancient building materials like cob, rammed earth, straw bale, etc, go mainstream than this plastic junk. However, one thing is for sure, is that we can't keep building McMansions.
- swebs 5y ago
  >one thing is for sure, is that we can't keep building McMansions Why not? They're surprisingly low on resources for their size. They seem to be mostly wood beams and sheet rock, with a thin concrete foundation.
  - vangelis 5y ago
    They're pretty garbage with respect to land use.
Gravityloss 5y ago
Some requirements for long lasting house building in the climate I'm living in: Houses should be raised from the ground and the underside ventilated, to prevent mold and indoor air quality problems. Roofs should be strong so they can handle snow, and tilted so water and snow falls off. All seams on the roof should be made so that water doesn't go in there and freeze. Concave structures on the roof should be avoided, as they collect water that freezes. There should be eaves and rain chutes on the roof so that water from the roof doesn't touch the walls. Water should be diverted away from the base of the building, so the house should preferably be on a hill, or should have drainage built around it. Overall the building walls and base should stay mostly dry. Most materials of the house should be moisture permeating so that when water gets in, it can dry out. The outermost layer of the roof and the foundation are an exception. Anything that touches the ground should be stone like granite, or some other material that can be in contact with wet ground for centuries with no changes. Now, the house could be any shape you wish for, as long as it fills these requirements. I see a lot of the new ideas fail a number of these requirements - they seem to be fanciful dreams not taking the reality of local conditions into account. So, to turn it around, what if one started an innovative house design from these requirements? A house wouldn't necessarily need to look like old-fashioned houses that have been built for centuries here. It could be weird looking and could still not be a moldy and leaky health and financial problem, with either constant repairs or just bulldozing after a few decades.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It is interesting that 'novel house designs' usually get dumped on unsuspecting prospects without taking all of your excellent points into consideration. Building a house is probably one of the skillsets that humanity has worked at for the longest, usually the set of criteria above would make for a good starting point modulated by available materials. But sometimes it helps to let go of that for a bit and to just see what kind of options the materials themselves give regardless of the real world criteria, with the hope of extracting something useful that can be made to fit into the real world environment, for instance by adapting it or by re-using some part of it. But for real world mass produced housing that is meant to work for the long time tradition is an excellent place to start, both for utility and cost efficiency.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> World's first! The fourth new material following wood, iron, and concrete. "Special expanded polystyrene" Oh god please stop. We are drowning the planet in plastic. Let's NOT produce more polystyrene; Several million tonnes per year is enough already. It's like an advertizement for an asbestos house or a lead kitchen.
smaudet 5y ago
This looks like a terrible waste of vertical space. Not to condone everyone living in apt buildings, but even just a second or third story seems untennable with just this tech. So you probably can't build a real home worth living in with this, but it is interesting tech nonetheless - perhaps for large granaries, depots, or other use cases where maybe efficiency is not as much of a concern. E.g. I could see usage for underground living spaces which just want to put up some custom walls which are not plaster, or perhaps for orbital space vessels.
nikolay 5y ago
Aren't styrofoam fumes toxic? What happens when this dome is on fire?!

188 points by traverseda 5y ago

Is this how Capsule Corps starts? Goku, where you at?

See also concrete dome homes: https://www.monolithic.org/domes https://www.monolithic.org/domes We were looking into concrete domes for building a home in Florida. We got cold feet when we couldn't find a contractor who would work in our area that had any experience with this procedure. I still would love to live in a "dome home".

JKCalhoun 5y ago
I would too. But I understand that, like A-frames, adapting vertical furniture, cabinets, etc. to walls that are not 90-degree vertical can be problematic. So you add vertical walls inside ... and then you're losing space.
- fortran77 5y ago
  Yes, of course. You'd have to be prepared for 100% custom furnishings inside.
  - antisthenes 5y ago
    And of course be prepared for the price tag that comes with the 100% custom furnishings. Knowing American labor costs, it'll cost an arm and a leg.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Reminds me a bit of this: https://www.rogerdean.com/home-for-life/ https://www.rogerdean.com/home-for-life/ I know that someone built one, somewhere, last century. It involved, basically, a heavy-duty “chicken wire” frame, with sprayed-on concrete.

ginko 5y ago

>World's first! The fourth new material following wood, iron, and concrete. ..and stone, and brick, and glass, and adobe, and straw, and fabric..

Lhiw 5y ago
... and dirt/mud.
- traverseda 5y ago
  Adobe was already mentioned.
nagisa 5y ago
Not to mention that polystyrene is very widely used as an insulation material for regular box-shaped houses today. Sure, not load bearing, but I would trust a wooden or concrete structure for load bearing much more than a polystyrene one, anyway. (Not to mention that polystyrene does not have any of the sustainability – which is all the rage nowadays – benefits either)
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It is actually used in load bearing applications as well, EPS parts can be made with up to 60 psi load carrying capacity (which borders on magic to me).
jojobas 5y ago
Paper. It's Japan after all.

edge17 5y ago

Domes see expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Makes me wonder why we always assumed the moon colonies of the future would be exotic looking architecture rather than boring and easy to upkeep.

beebeepka 5y ago
Biosphere vs biocube
- wirthjason 5y ago
  Bio-dome, Buuuddee! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-Dome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-Dome
analog31 5y ago
Probably same reason why pipes are round, and propane tanks are hemispherical on the ends. Under pressure / vacuum, corners are stress risers, and flat sheets have to be supported.
throwawaysea 5y ago
They have great properties around wind flow and structural support of the roof system. In a concrete dome house, the roof and the vertical supports are one continuous structure - so no more hurricane blowing off your roof. The building technique is exotic but not hard - one approach is to inflate a plastic sheet into a dome shape and the. spray concrete on the inside to build up the outer shell. Check out this example, which keeps the open garage on the ground floor so that there’s less load from wind on the structure and so the living quarters won’t get flooded: https://youtu.be/n7CjYhKBjtU https://youtu.be/n7CjYhKBjtU
jacquesm 5y ago
Much easier to pressurize and keep airtight than something with 90 degree angles. That's why the ISS is shaped the way it is, cylinders joined with circular joints.

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NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago

Compare to geofoam:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofoam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofoam In particular the use of geofoam at Chicago's Millenium park: https://www.insulfoam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/april-16-update_job-site-camera.jpg https://www.insulfoam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/april-1... In the specific case of Millenium Park it makes some intuitive sense since there's a parking garage beneath it that can only bear so much weight. For individual homes, I'm not convinced. I'm probably just ignorant of polystyrene's properties and the tradeoffs relative to other materials, but I'm worried about it just kind of hanging around in the environment as buildings degrade. Concrete, steel, and glass do that, I suppose, but in a less displeasing way...

kennywinker 5y ago
Geofoam and this: microplastic leeching sites for the next 100 years.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Yep, I'm concerned about this--though I'm no expert.
jacquesm 5y ago
Polystyrene filler for concrete foundations is pretty much how it is done these days.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Filler? I've seen foam inside/outside the concrete for insulation, but as a filler...as in replacing aggregate in the concrete?
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    You can do that too to reduce the density of the concrete and to increase the insulation value but what you're more likely to encounter is to have the foundation layered in foam slabs and then concrete poured over the top for a good mixture of strength and insulation. The styrofoam insulates and because the concrete and the foam are in contact it also helps to diffuse loads. Some pictures: https://fpmccann.co.uk/portfolio-items/thermabeam/ https://fpmccann.co.uk/portfolio-items/thermabeam/ Insulated foundations set on foam: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/placing-a-concrete-foundation-on-rigid-foam-insulation https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/placing-a-concr... The main reason is to fully insulate the thermal mass of the house from the surroundings. I see this happen around here all the time and even though I understand the basics I'm still not sure that I would like the house that I own and have a good chunk of my saving in built like that because of the long term compression of the foam. I'd be worry about uneven compression and cracks or other foundation issues. But it's really very common.

CatsEyes 5y ago

Free golf ball facade after first hailstorm!

jacquesm 5y ago
You can use concrete loaded with an x percentage of styrofoam as a filler to get something approaching dial-a-density. As you add more foam the insulating properties get better but it gets structurally weaker. Ideally you'd layer your densities, more solid on the outside, more foam on the inside. That would also make affixing things and joining the panels easier.

throwawayay02 5y ago

DragonBall was ahead of it's time.

geolqued 5y ago

Youtuber Chris Broad "Abroad in Japan" visits these domes in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE

daemonhunter 5y ago
Too much volcano! Was going to comment a link to his video as well.

miralize 5y ago

Good 99% episode on this style of house. Very hard to decorate and furnish https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/

jacquesm 5y ago

These have been built since the 70's, the quickest constructions were essentially inflated balloons that concrete loaded with Styrofoam was spread over, after curing the balloons were deflated and used for the next unit. Pretty similar construction here, tons of other examples (really, too many to even list) in various publications: https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/foam-dome-zmaz80mjzraw https://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/foam-dome-zmaz80... I really do not see the novelty.

jaclaz 5y ago
The original idea dates back to the sixties: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216984
- jacquesm 5y ago
  30's.
svdr 5y ago
The Barbapapa family built their house like this in the 70's as well: https://live.staticflickr.com/1787/42134502335_045815b1ee_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/1787/42134502335_045815b1ee_b....
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure if I dig back enough I'll be able to find stuff from the 60's with rapid dome construction based on styrofoam and concrete in it. It is definitely an interesting way to construct things, I know of a company that uses styrofoam loaded concrete for the fabrication of window frames for brick houses and there are probably a lot of other current applications for that. Domes have - since Buckminster Fuller, really - been built from all kinds of materials, this is one of the more interesting combinations because it at least does away with all of the nasty seems at nasty angles that a 'normal' geodesic dome has. But some of the problems remain: windows and doors will always require either a special panel or be a bad match for the rest of the dome. The floorplan will pretty much ensure that there aren't any right angles anywhere, so furniture such as bookcases and such (but hey, who needs books... ok, wardrobes) will have to be custom made or placed inefficiently, or all around the center of the dome where they will have a big impact on light. It's a super elegant concept, but it has problems. I built a small (8 meter diameter) dome in Canada as a spot to sit near the river that ran through our property, we didn't really get around to finishing it (just foil over wood & steel) but it blended in nicely, in a way that very little other buildings would and for that reason alone I'd love to build another one here in NL. But the problems with the shape have so far withheld me from doing it. It might also work well as an office. https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/the-restoration-of-buckminster-fullers-dome-home-kicks-off-saturday_o https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/the-restoration... Higher number of panels will approximate the dome shape better, will be easier to put up by a single individual, but will also cause more length of seam and hence more chance of springing a leak or rot in case of woodwork in the panels.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

I don't see specs (or prices); that always makes me suspicious. It looks like they're looking for developers to pay for 100's of these at a time, so this clearly isn't an option for a typical contractor or home build. How does it handle fire? Earthquakes? Wind? I see that the panels are joined; have there been stress or pressure tests for leaks? And how difficult/expensive are repairs? Does the surface attract mold? It seems like a safer bet would be to use this material as a combination sheeting+insulation in traditional homes, but I'll bet it's more expensive, so they're trying to sell it as a complete solution to throw out the costs of foundation and framing.

mixmastamyk 5y ago

Neat, reminds me a bit of the "lego style" construction method of this company: https://gablok.com/en/ https://gablok.com/en/

jacquesm 5y ago
Oh that's nice! I actually had an idea for this on the drawing board at some time, great to see that it has been done. The blocks I had in mind were more universal though, and easy to put together with just hand tools, these look like they would be nice to create using a CNC driven block factory, a bit like a roofing company makes joists using a CNC driven chopsaw.

lemoncookiechip 5y ago

These have been featured at least twice in the Abroad in Japan channel on YT. Chris Broad (the host) and his friends even spent the night in them. The atmosphere and scenery are quite something. Here's one of the videos showcasing the Igloo house during one of his Journey Across Japan series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqX_2Wmj7xE

deleted 5y ago
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goodpoint 5y ago

The environmental benefits could be negated by the very low urban density achieved. People use cars like crazy when living in a sprawl.

DennisP 5y ago
Not to mention, polystyrene is a significant portion of our plastic waste problem. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318854130_An_overview_on_biodegradation_of_polystyrene_and_modified_polystyrene_the_microbial_approach https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318854130_An_overvi...

marcodiego 5y ago

Very similar to the houses in phantasy star: https://blogtectoy.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/phantasy_star-e1479408150765.jpg https://blogtectoy.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/phantas...

daneel_w 5y ago

I presume it will melt, like any other expanded polystyrene, the very second it reaches 100° Celsius.

jacquesm 5y ago
No, the concrete it appears to be embedded in should stop that from happening, it is essentially a hollow panel at this stage with a dense concrete surface layer. That's also why then can have those tensional elements in it, if you tried that with 100% styrofoam it wouldn't do anything other than rip the elements apart.
- daneel_w 5y ago
  I doubt it. Neither plaster nor cement are ideal thermal insulators, and 100° Celsius is not much in the context of a raging fire. I don't think a fire will need much time to deform the EPS panels in these buildings.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I've worked a bit with woodpanels insulated with styrofoam embedded within concrete. They weren't nearly as fireproof as brick or full reinforced concrete but compared reasonably well with just woodframe or steel (which was the worst of the lot). As you already observed, it's all about the insulation, and even though the foam itself may melt the concrete will survive the initial roasting and that just leaves you with a bunch of gaps in the concrete which makes it insulate much better than solid concrete would. You'd have to set up a proper test to determine the amount of insulation you'd have to add (I'd absolutely hate to have to drywall a surface like this). One way to do it would be to stucco the inside. But depending on the thickness of the walls you might not need much to achieve the amount of structural integrity required by the fire code, these are not going to be multi level buildings anyway. Edit: I did some more digging and found this image on their website: http://www.i-domehouse.com/product_type/img/01-04_2.jpg http://www.i-domehouse.com/product_type/img/01-04_2.jpg So it appears that the foam core is just foam, nothing else, so there is no interior structure other than the styrofoam. This won't pass building code or fire code for structural integrity anywhere that I've ever built something. I can see them using these for emergency shelters but not for permanent occupation without more internal structure. They do show a resort built with these, I wonder where it is and what kind of building code they operate under. The cement backing is just a thin layer applied to the outside of the panels, so indeed, when they get too hot the interior will melt and then you're just looking at two thin bits of cement without any kind of reinforcement. It would likely collapse immediately if they did not take any precautions. Fire safety is not something I could find any information on in their pages, they do mention excellent earthquake resistance, which I totally believe.

tzs 5y ago

I once worked in an office building that was a two story geodesic dome. It was mostly OK, except that the curved walls could be annoying especially on the second floor. I had a second floor office and it was hard to find good use for the space against the outside wall. Anything tall, like a bookshelf or lamp, had to be quite a ways out from the base of the wall to get enough vertical room. A desk would have fit in that space, but who wants a desk facing the wall away from the door so you are working with you back to anyone who enters your office? I ended up putting a couch there. Unless you were quite tall there was little chance of accidentally bopping your head when trying to sit down or get up, and it only took the tall people a couple of hits to learn to be careful. :-) Domes are cool looking on the outside, but require care to make work on the inside. They probably work better as houses than office buildings, because the designer of a house can better anticipate what each room will be used for and arrange it so that things you'd naturally want against outside walls are things that would be OK with the curves. An office building has a lot more variability from tenant to tenant, making it more likely that the tenant's things won't work well against the curved walls. My main concern if I was considering a dome for a house would be maintenance and repairs. For example if it has a shingled roof and developed a leak could any average roofing company deal with it, or would I be looking at calling in specialists? Probably best for a dome to get one that is not essentially a conventional building in dome shape, like the office building we were in, but rather something like the domes in the article.

jacquesm 5y ago
Do you have a streetview link to this building, I'd love to see it?
- tzs 5y ago
  Here's the one we had offices in [1]. The same builder built a couple more in the same town at around the same time (late '80s) [2]. Here's a link to the first building at the county parcel search site, showing a photo and drawing with floor dimensions and area [3], and with links to all kinds of other details. Looks like it was last sold a few months ago for $365k in case anyone is curious about how much such a building is worth. That's not bad for an almost 4000 sq ft building. Here's the parcel search link for the smaller one at the second location [4], and here is the link for the larger one at the second location [5]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7538416,-122.665396,3a,60y,138.76h,89.2t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sd47pZUC4rGWQ6d5CS4uVJQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7538416,-122.665396,3a,60y,1... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7433177,-122.6567975,3a,60y,110.58h,81.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srmg6r38jT1ONFF9iXrwEmA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7433177,-122.6567975,3a,60y,... [3] https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossketches&parcel=1329044 https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossk... [4] https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossketches&parcel=1336197 https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossk... [5] https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossketches&parcel=1995000 https://psearch.kitsapgov.com/pdetails/Details?page=photossk...

GuB-42 5y ago

Ok, what's the catch? We see new ideas for home building all the time, dome shaped, 3D printed, using shipping containers, etc... and yet, everyone in the world still builds vaguely box shaped buildings with wood, bricks or concrete. All these new things tend to have issues with at least one of condensation, insulation, overall cost, convenience, weatherproofing, local availability of materials, durability, safety, etc... Dome houses are far from a new idea, neither are plastic houses, I have never seen them except as a novelty or experiment. I don't know what's wrong with them, but if there were good, we would probably see more of them. Modern construction techniques are well optimized and adapted to the local environment, using several layers, with materials serving a specific function like structural integrity, insulation or weatherproofing, with good value. If you want to sound fancy, you can call it composite materials.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
One problem I see is the same problem I see when considering a greenhouse with vertical walls or a hoophouse with curved walls. Vertical walls don’t waste space. In a hoop house or these dome houses there will be weird parts all around the edge that aren’t very tall that could be considered wasted space.
anonporridge 5y ago
The catch is that curved edges are a pain in the ass to fit furniture in, and varying sizes of dome homes have different curve angles, so you can't just make standard "curved" furniture. An box is a box regardless of size, and any couch fits against any flat wall. Sectional couches now let you customize the size to fit bigger or smaller boxes. Unless you get a lot of custom pieces, you can lose a lot of space or end up with awkward and ugly situations, so it really only works for people who have the time and resources to spend on custom interior design. Because of all this, resale of the home can be difficult, because your market is limited to the small community of people Perhaps as 3d and custom manufacturing becomes more commonplace and price competitive with assembly line products, there will be more of an appetite for the amount of customization that these kinds of homes require.
- 5y ago

anonporridge 5y ago

Monolithic has been doing this in the US for years, https://www.monolithic.org/homes https://www.monolithic.org/homes. It's disappointing that it hasn't caught on, but there are practical reasons that make the design difficult despite it's greater efficiencies and resilience.

jacquesm 5y ago
These are using dense concrete though, the ones from the article use a 100% foam core with thin layers of concrete on the outside and zero reinforcement or other structural components that I can detect. I really like the Monolithic domes, they seem like the most practical way of constructing such a structure. No seams just what you need, no more and no less and a very mature process, far ahead of the company in the article in terms of applicability, all you need to ship from the factory is the inflatables, concrete you can make on-site.

chefandy 5y ago

Looks like a great base structure for your new moisture farm.

getpost 5y ago

This reminds me of Wallace Neff's Airform houses, which were built using pneumatic forms and spray-on concrete. https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/airform-bubble-house https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/airform-bubble-house https://www.mortarsprayer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Wallace-Neff.pdf https://www.mortarsprayer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Wal...

traverseda 5y ago

Please note that they actually make a lot of non-dome buildings using this set of technology.

dr-detroit 5y ago

Not even joking this isnt a japanese website they dont do all this goofy jQuery stuff in Japan

wiradikusuma 5y ago

I guess the natural next step is to squeeze it into a capsule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xnE3MQXWy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xnE3MQXWy0

bschwindHN 5y ago

I see they found the same photographer every Japanese real-estate company uses to take some shitty jpegs of the installation, nice!

mnemotronic 5y ago

Any outgassing from the synthetic material, the adhesive of the sealants? How well does it stand up to 100 mph winds or golfball size hail? How well can it resist UV at 8200 ft ASL?

Animats 5y ago

There's a version of this where you inflate a dome-shaped balloon to a moderately high pressure, and then spray foamed concrete on it.[1] Once the foam sets, you deflate the balloon, and you have a dome. There were door and window modules built to fit this. Works OK, not very popular. The overall effect is that of a Quonset hut. Works OK, used by militaries worldwide, few people live in them by choice. [1] https://foamconcreteworld.com/dome-houses/ https://foamconcreteworld.com/dome-houses/

jazzyjackson 5y ago
Yes, heard about these from 99% Invisible podcast “bubble houses” [0], design originated by hollywood architect Wallace Neff who got it in his head that rapid construction of bubble houses could be a boon to homelessness It’s also simular in principal to Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti and Cosanti - really cool technique where you build a form in sand, pour concrete, and then excavate the sand out to reveal the dome. You can get beautiful organic forms this way, simply carving shapes and even painting the sand - pigment will be picked up by the concrete as it cures [1] [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bubble-houses/ [1] https://www.gypsyandthenavigator.com/2019/06/arcosantithe-city-of-the-future-that-time-seems-to-forget.html https://www.gypsyandthenavigator.com/2019/06/arcosantithe-ci...

kortex 5y ago

I don't understand the appeal of domes compared to cylinders and other rounded extrusions. You still have the complexity of round interfaces but at least the outer surface has zero Gaussian curvature (you can wrap it with a sheet). Negative curvature (hyperboloids) can "cheat" and use a net of straight lines, so that also has nice properties. But, positive curvature surfaces (spherica and geodesic domes) require compound curvature everywhere. See also the complaints elsewhere about space utilization. I guess they look cool, that is their main feature. They also seem good for tensile structures (inflated domes) and massive self-supporting spaces. But you can also get most of those properties with extrusions, which are way simpler to fabricate.

epicureanideal 5y ago

This is the kind of thing I'd expect to see more of if we deregulated the building industry. A handful of friends could put up a house like the one shown in this article pretty quickly and cheaply. See also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29224482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29224482 > > There is one issue with the developers - they have less incentive to build enough homes to actually drive down prices via market forces because it means less profit for them. > People were building their own homes for centuries before there were "developers". I would argue that over-regulation has made it extremely difficult for small builders or family builders to attempt to build their own homes. Only large corporations with a legal team can run that gauntlet. > If regulation were reduced, we'd probably see a lot more small time builders, or people taking classes to learn how to build their own homes, cooperatives being set up (possibly organized through Y Combinator startups dedicated to that) where people could Amish-style bring a community together to build homes.

officeplant 5y ago
>I would argue that over-regulation has made it extremely difficult for small builders or family builders to attempt to build their own homes. Only large corporations with a legal team can run that gauntlet. A difficult balance of: People should be able to build things themselves cheaply and efficiently Things should meet some sort of code and not cause greater harm to the area or others. (edited for clarity)

bemmu 5y ago

When travel opens up again and you find yourself taking a trip to Japan, come visit Wakayama's Toretore Village: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6797444,135.3761989,3a,75y,82.47h,81.55t https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6797444,135.3761989,3a,75y,8... You can stay in one of the dome rooms in what feels a bit like a Smurf village.

jacquesm 5y ago
Those look like they have been made by the same manufacturer.

kabuks 5y ago