points by tzs 4 years 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.