andrewdurham.com

Good Designs
For their simplicity, ease, economy, strength, beauty, and elegance,
I recommend the following designs/methods for shelter construction:

Self-Strutting Geodesic Plydome a frameless sphere from Bucky's own pencil
Conic Shelter sweeping, simple, brilliant circled-square construction
Hexayurt the 3-hour, $200, portable pop up shelter
Superadobe giant upside down coil pots made from war materials
BioHome steel-reinforced, 90 R-value foam dome
Pillow Dome(pdf)
- This represents the perfection of the frame-and-skin dome of Fuller. Created by Jay Baldwin, the author of _BuckyWorks_. This ultimately led to the gigantic greenhouses at The Eden Project in England
Warmlite Tent
- This tent and its designer, Jack Stephenson, have had a huge influence on all my design thinking for 13 years. Can you imagine, he went from being an insulation engineer on NASA space rockets to designing camping gear! After 40 years, his stuff is still decades ahead of its time. Only a few of his ideas started to be copied in the last 5-10 years. I used to talk to him for hours on the phone. Great guy.

These last two designs are proper applications of the frame-and-skin method of construction. That is, there is a very lightweight frame that supports fabric or film--a very flexible material possessing only tensile strength--almost completely lacking in compressive strength (or their combination: cantileverage).

You'll notice that the other designs are all shell constructions. That is, they are frameless. Why? Because frames should not be used to hold up materials that can hold themselves up. There is no integrity in that approach. I mean I find it a shame to put up a frame, then hang on it a rigid or semi-rigid material which, by itself, could physically hold up the whole building. While this approach DOES have the advantages of requiring no imagination or economy on the part of the owner, builder, or designer, I chose designs that embody: a dynamic elegance bordering on anti-gravity; simplicity any 5 year old can grasp; and economy that any schmuck can achieve. Why settle for anything less?

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