Customer Reviews

Dome Living : A Creative Guide For Planning Your Monolithic Dream Home

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a layman's description of a proprietary thin-shelled air-inflated shotcrete dome fabrication process, along with an extensive listing of possible floor plans. Disadvantages- It naturally favors the manufacturer's process; It does not provide technical information or performance data or specifications; It does not address planning/design for MEP utilities.

Advantages- Demonstrates the utility of the dome concept; Provides abundant floor plans to examine and modify; Good to fair overall description of the concept.

The book claims to be a "guide for planning" a home but really it is an advertizement for the Monolithic Dome Institute which sells them and runs workshops on them. However, there dozens of plans of dome structures that have been built or designed using this product so its a cool book to look at if you love house designs like I do. What would have been better is for each plan to have a picture of the house as it looked built.

Dome Living is a book intended for the audience who is already convinced of the superior structure of the monolithic dome. Complementary to the technical side, it appeals to the right-brained with the "art" of the dome. The photos in the first half illustrate just how beautiful the dome curves can be designed, as opposed to the "box" house orientation. The 91 pages of floorplans provide plenty of ideas for your own dome.

Half this guide is dedicated to floor plans of every type. The rest is an overview of what is involved in building a monolithic dome. This is NOT a how to guide. It you are considering a monolithic dome then this book is an excellent starting point with plenty of pictures and illustrations.

Dome Living is mostly for people planning a single family home, though it does touch on the issues of industrial, religious, educational, and recreational construction uses. This book is technical enough to understand exactly what the dome process is about, and if more info is needed, it has plenty of contact information to get your questions answered.
The photos are excellent, and show the potential beauty and versatility of style of Monolithic domes. Anyone familiar with geodesic domes could easily see the greater advantage and beauty of these concrete shell domes.
My only wish is that the section on houseplans included more mid-sized homes.

I actually managed to find this at a local library after putting it on my wish list! Yes, it IS pretty much promotional material for Monolithic Domes, but even so it does give you a lot more "feel" for what living in a dome is like than most books on the subject. Plus it has lots of floor plans for domes, something that's very difficult to find.

I myself would have liked to have heard a lot more from the people living in domes. How happy are they with their homes? What would they have done differently, knowing what they do now? How do they solve the problems of placing square furniture in a round space? Yes, there WAS some of that, but I would have liked to have seen more. And I also would have liked to see full coverage photos of the entire home to compare to the floor plan.

In addition, I have to question the wisdom of Monolithic Domes for asking customers to pay $25 for their promotional materials, when the primary barrier to wider acceptance of dome homes is customer unfamiliarity with the concept!

My book arrived quickly and in exactly the condition described. It had even more pictures inside than I expected. Thank you!