Home Sweet Dome

These arched abodes are easy on the eyes - and the planet

by KIM DAVIS

“It’s like coming home when you enter the dome,” says yoga instructor Madeleine McCarthy. She’s talking about the wooden dome building where she holds her regular Kripalu classes in the small West Kootenay town of New Denver. Without any sharp edges, the flowing lines of the dome’s sloping walls create a space that feels open, restful, and harmonious.

“When a new student first enters, immediately their body language speaks of delight, or wonderment and awe,” McCarthy says.

Likened to giant beehives or wooden igloos by some, and conjuring images of Tolkien’s Hobbit houses for others, the monolithic domes of New Denver’s Villa Dome Quixote Lodge have been garnering attention ever since they were built seven years ago.

Consisting of four conjoined domes, the unique lodge and adjacent guesthouses were erected as prototypes by Canadian inventor and engineer Salah Eldeib. Eldeib was motivated by his work on residential concrete domes and inspired by the thought of using discarded wood trim ends as a sustainable building material. The result? A structural system that has proven not only visually arresting but also strong, economical, energy-efficient, and environmentally sensitive.

Since building the lodge, Eldeib has also designed a modular dome for easy portability between sites. When representatives from Mongolia met Eldeib at the GLOBE 2006 environmental conference, they quickly realized how his company, Canadian Wooden Domes, could help solve their country’s complex housing needs. In January of last year, Eldeib was invited to meet with Mongolia’s president, who was sold on the domes’ affordability and ease of construction. There are now plans to build some 14,000 domes—as housing, service buildings, and, in some cases, whole villages—across the country’s 21 provinces.

“Ten years from now I can see CWD structures in at least 50 countries,” says Eldeib. “I can see these structures used for housing, commercial applications, schools, and sports facilities.”

He also foresees eventually combining his Canadian-born technology with regionally available building materials and labour wherever they are built. In Egypt, for example, CWD is already looking at making the boards for the domes’ frame from fibres left over from sugar cane production.

Closer to home, several local architects, including Rodney Cottrell of Rodney F. Cottrell Holistic Architecture and Sharif Senbel of Studio Senbel, have begun incorporating the innovative technology into their projects. Senbel, whose studio has designed several local mosques, used two domes in the Masjid al-Salaam and Education Centre (Burnaby Mosque) being built at 5060 Canada Way: one above an entry portal, another to top a minaret. The building won’t be finished until spring, but Senbel says the zinc-tile-clad dome is already turning the heads of passing motorists—not to mention those who enter the mosque to pray.

“Most framed dome systems,” Senbel says, “produce some form of faceted dome. Canadian Wooden Domes produce a near-smooth curvilinear surface without resorting to more costly monolithic or bent-steel systems.” 

Cottrell recently designed a multi-storey luxury dome residence in the Okanagan. He says he appreciates not only the system’s sustainable attributes—resource- and energy-efficiency—but also how it lends itself to the creation of distinctive and unique spaces he describes as “a more perfect emulation of nature.”

“Cozy,” “harmonious,” and “intimate yet spacious” are terms visitors and guests have used to describe the interior of Villa Dome Quixote. “As a society we are so used to square and sharp edges, so a dome is unique in that regard,” says Tim Magee, a regular guest at the lodge. “You go into these rooms and they are not harsh; they are welcoming. The curvature is comforting, a kind of cocoon-like feel.”

Laurie Silfven, a resident of Alaska who travels to New Denver every year to ski, couldn’t agree more. “It is kind of nice that no one feels like they are in a corner,” she says, describing the lodge’s large gathering room. “It is very intimate, and the curved spaces add sophistication.”

“Wherever you look your mind comes to rest,” adds yoga instructor McCarthy.

Entering a dome, it’s easy to see why. There’s just the continuous curve of a wall up to the top and then back down again: no beginning, no end, no corners to punctuate the conclusion of one space and the beginning of another.

As McCarthy explains, “The dome has an unmistakable resonance that is not present in rectangular spaces. It promotes being in the moment.”

Kim Davis is a Vancouver researcher, writer, and designer who is working on living in the moment, with or without angles.

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