Electrical wiring is more than power for lights, air conditioning, and toasters. It’s also phone calls, surfing the web, fire alarms, and a surround sound theater—any system where an electrical circuit is needed. With proper planning, wiring a Monolithic Dome—whether it’s a home, school, storage, or storm shelter—is straightforward.
Come and tour the shops, offices, and houses at the Monolithic Dome Research Park in Italy, Texas. This FREE tour is open to the public on October 19, 2024, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and includes the famous Bruco: The Texas Italian Caterpillar.
BYU’s Triple Dome, featuring a Monolithic Dome structure, showcases advanced energy efficiency and sustainable design. Built by over 50 students, this innovative eco-friendly home highlights BYU’s dedication to practical, hands-on learning in green building technologies.
Some friends of Monolithic own a rental house in Milford, Texas, that was in dire need of some attention to the Airform. The house is about 20 years old, and the Airform has never been coated. Over the years, UV and weather damage has left the polyurethane foam exposed and blistering. A great way to renovate the exterior of a Monolithic Dome Home like this one is to patch the Airform and install a synthetic stucco coating.
Italy High School intended to hold their graduation ceremony in their new, shiny stadium, but as the temperature continued to climb on Friday, it became clear it would be unsafe to hold the festivities outside. Late in the day, the school district sent an alert that graduation had been moved to the multipurpose Monolithic Dome gymnasium, the Gladiator Coliseum.
On Tuesday, April 23, 2024, we laid to rest our friend and colleague, James Laurence Byrne, in the Sutton Cemetery near Rexburg, Idaho. Larry was a family man, church and community leader, farmer, former Air Force Captain, and a pioneer in the Monolithic Dome industry. For three decades, Larry served as chief designer at Monolithic, where he designed everything from houses to giant storages, developed standardized design elements still used across the dome industry, and consulted with engineers and architects as they worked to become familiar with dome design.
After ten careful years of discussion and development, Orange Coast College modeled its new Planetarium on our spiral Milky Way galaxy and placed a Monolithic Dome at its center.
Metal cladding adds beauty, strength and sustainability to Monolithic Domes. It reduces the need for maintenance and can add decades of life to a dome. Steel shingles protect domes from extremes of temperature, UV light, and water absorption.
Barry Braswell is carefully looking for new stewards for his family’s iconic Monolithic Dome Home situated on 40 acres in the untamed foothills of the San Bernadino Mountains of California. Built by Braswell and his uncle, Vista Dhome is 4500 square feet and features a spectacular view.
Greg O’Toole’s company, O’Toole, Inc., in Letts, Iowa, has been in the business of supplying farmers with what they need since 1981. Iowa grows more corn than any other state in the United States, at 2.5 billion bushels of corn a year, and the United States leads in corn production across the world, at 13.7 billion bushels a year, according to the Iowa Corn Growers Association. Greg chose a Monolithic Dome to contain the urea he supplies to keep that corn and other crops growing.
Have you ever wanted to build a Monolithic Dome? To get your hands dirty applying foam, hanging steel, and spraying shotcrete? Want to learn from dome builders with decades of experience? Now’s your chance. Come to the Spring 2023 Monolithic Dome Builders Workshop this April and build a genuine Monolithic Dome.
Winter construction on a new fertilizer storage for O’Toole, inc. in Letts, Iowa, went very smoothly despite the weather. One of the great things about Monolithic Dome construction is that most of the work is done inside and out of the elements. This project highlighted that advantage and is a great example of the most efficient single-component dome storage that can be built.
This pictorial illustrates the steps we took to give Ryan Brown’s house in Aubrey, Texas, the perfect stucco exterior. The stucco system on Ryan Brown’s Monolithic Dome home will last 10 to 15 years before a top coat will be needed. The top coats are easy and cost-effective to apply and can be done by the homeowner or local paint contractor.
Round Tuit Ranch in Polo, Illinois, is for sale. The 2200 square foot, fully remodeled, Monolithic Dome home rests on 3.3 acres of park-like farmland. The home includes an open floor plan with a spacious kitchen and living room, four bedrooms, and two full baths. The acreage surrounding the dome provides a home for horses, too. There are fenced pastures, a 28-foot x 20-foot hay barn, and a 32-foot x 14-foot horse barn with three stalls.
Planning and fundraising for the Kauai Resilience Center is underway. The three-dome disaster response center is designed to house a fire department, police, emergency medical personnel, and public shelters for up to 450 people. Up to 1500 people could take shelter in the center during an emergency. Jill Lowry, director of Anaina Hou Community Park, said that few structures on Kauai could survive winds stronger than a large tropical storm. She warns a hurricane could strike at any time, or a fire could rage, and she wants Kauai to be ready.
The 2023 Annular Eclipse hit its peak at about noon on the day of the tour. Someone pointed out that the sunlight filtering through the leaves of all the trees had suddenly transformed into tiny Monolithic logos!
At about noon on October 14, 2023, an eclipse slid through the sky, and visitors stared upward, wearing special eyewear provided by Gary Clark of Monolithic. They came from all parts of Texas and from Southern states like Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Alabama. They spilled in from as far northwest as Washington state and from the Midwestern states of Oklahoma and Kansas. They arrived from the Buckeye State, Ohio; the home of the Hoosiers, Indiana; and the Rockies of Colorado. But they hadn’t come to see the eclipse; they came to tour the headquarters of the Monolithic Dome Institute.
Joshua P. Richardson, realtor and a graduate of the Fall 2023 Monolithic Dome Builders Workshop, has received a $25,000 grant and mentorship from Heartland Forward to support his plans to start his own dome company. Only 12 of 1000 applicants were accepted to the program, which includes mentorship.
Monolithic Dome homes are built to last; sometimes, they outlast their creators. The Shell House, designed in the Catskills by architect Seymour Rutkin, began 25 years ago as a light-filled sanctuary and as his dream come true. Since then, it’s become a place of incubation and inspiration for dozens of other dreamers. The Shell House still resonates with sparkling life.
The Claddagh Dome, named for friendship, love, and loyalty, is a Monolithic Dome home for sale located near the DFW Metroplex. The energy-efficient house features 2,274 square feet of space, with an upper level of 1018 square feet and a lower level of 1256 square feet. The south-facing dome rests on two-thirds of an acre of gentle land in Azle, Texas. This suburban town of 13,712, only 14 miles northwest of Fort Worth, calls itself “the Gateway to Eagle Mountain Lake.” A nearby reservoir includes swimming beaches, three public boat ramps, camping, fishing, and water sports.
The recovery efforts on Maui continue unceasingly as families, homes, and businesses rise from the ashes, exhaustion, and grief caused by the wildfires of August 2023. “Everyone’s overwhelmed,” said Tapani Vuori, general manager of the Maui Ocean Center in Makawao. “It took more than a month to get things coordinated and cohesive. We had forty volunteers, but at first, the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) simply were not ready.”
When Typhoon Mawar hit Guam in May 2023, all of Stanley Hall and Linda Tatreau’s neighbors left the area, but Linda decided to stay at Tasi Dome. Stanley had traveled to San Diego, and Linda and her two dogs, Enzo and Thunder, rode out the strongest typhoon to hit Guam since 2002. The couple have been living in Tasi Dome on Guam for the past 11 years, and Linda feels safer there than anywhere else. “It’s strong in storms,” Linda said. “That’s why we built it.”
The adventurous entrepreneurs at the Fall 2023 Monolithic Dome Builders Workshop learned skills to create their own homes, and some of them also discovered a shared passion for bringing these sturdy, sustainable structures to their communities as affordable housing.
We love our Monolithic Dome home—Arcadia. We love how it makes us feel safe. It is always comfortable—year round. And when people are willing to travel across the U.S. just to see it, that makes it truly special.
We are sad to report the passing of Arnold Wilson—husband, father, professor, engineer, and Monolithic Dome pioneer. He married his high school sweetheart, Joyce, and together they raised ten children. For forty years, he taught engineering at Brigham Young University (BYU). He was instrumental in the engineering of hundreds of Monolithic Domes.
The city of Madison Heights, Michigan, demolished its old uninsulated salt storage dome and replaced it with a Monolithic Dome. The reasons were simple: the Monolithic Dome was less money to construct than anticipated, has superior longevity and requires less overall maintenance. A report published by Marquette University said, “While a concrete dome also requires maintenance to protect it from the effects of salt and the elements, the interval is much less frequent, and the effects of the maintenance are much longer-lasting toward protecting the integrity of the structure.”
In Maryland, a triple dome home rises, named The Tatooine of Catoctin Mountains. The family loves their location, situated about two miles from the Appalachian Trail. “When I was a Boy Scout, I hiked from Susquehanna to the Potomac over ten weekends,” owner Chris Hyser said. The Hysers reported that high winds sweep across the mountains and can be a problem in their area, so they had safety and permanence in mind when they decided to build a Monolithic Dome as their forever home.
The Monolithic Dome Research Park is opening to the public for tours on October 14, 2023. Plus, there is a dome home in Utah showing the same day as well. Both tours are free and open to the public.
Crash! A storm had been raging for almost an hour, hail pounding the windows, when thunder roared as lightning struck hard against the Southern Towers Monolithic Dome Home.
Benjamin Erwin and his wife are selling their two bedroom, two bathroom Monolithic Dome home in Ocala, Florida. They dome is a gemini style twin domed structure of a 50-foot diameter living space and a 40-foot diameter, two-car garage. Ben purchased the home in 2017 and rennovated the exterior in 2020.
Monolithic Domes found their way into the spotlight this summer, featured in articles in Business Insider, Architectural Digest, and Cowboy State Daily. All three articles noted the creative shape of the dome.
When Paul and Shirley Tinsley chose to build a Monolithic Dome home in Cudjoe Key, Florida, they had no idea that they were building a home that would withstand not one, but two Category 4 hurricanes in six years: Hurricane Irma, in August of 2017, and Hurricane Ian, in September 2022.
The Maui Ocean Center—one of the top ten aquariums in the world—chose a Monolithic Dome for its 3D “Humpbacks of Hawaii Exhibit and Sphere” experience, bringing visitors eye to eye with these denizens of the deep.
For the first time ever, BYU will be a stop on the Utah Valley Parade of Homes. The reason? BYU students have designed, engineered and built a truly one-of-a-kind sustainable, transportable, affordable home—right on campus.
Local residents are enjoying the years of planning and work put in to improve the well-being of the community offered at the Reeves County Recreation Center. The facility began as an idea among the county commissioners in early 2012. Though elected officials changed over the years, each court has had at least one torchbearer who refused to let the dream lose momentum.
Bad concrete. A projector flashes picture after picture of concrete voids, poorly embedded rebar, and a concrete mess all over the ground. It’s Friday afternoon at the Spring 2023 Monolithic Dome Builders Workshop and Gary Clark is giving his presentation, “The Worst Shotcrete Job, Ever.”
While the house has sold, we still want to talk about this beautiful dome home because it’s unique, plus it’s the residence of retired Monolithic Dome designer Larry Byrne and his wonderful wife, Marilee. They designed and constructed a genuinely unique Monolithic Dome home, and we want to give it — and them — a proper sendoff.
The Transition Ring Airform membrane is a composite air structure used as the formwork for constructing a hoop-style Monolithic Dome, aka the hoop dome. It is manufactured to inflate with a cylinder-shaped stem wall and a dome roof. To achieve this result, a steel ring is incorporated at the junction between the wall and dome membranes.
Earlier this month, a new Monolithic Dome gymnasium and safe room opened at Central City High School. It’s the first Monolithic Dome gym in the state of Nebraska. Steve White of Nebraska.tv was there to cover the open house.
The Silvershore Monolithic Dome Home is for sale. The house sits on a 290-foot by 130-foot lot on the shore of Bayou Grande in Pensacola Bay with a commanding view of the bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The house is right on the water with a small beach and a boat dock.
CTV News recently featured a Monolithic Dome home in Saskatchewan, Canada. Tonia Vermette constructed the home 18 years ago, and it’s a wonderful place to live, but as an artist, she never seemed to be finished with the house. Over the years, she’s painted murals, vines, and textures on the walls, turning the home into a living artwork.
On a beautiful sunny day, hundreds traveled to Italy, Texas, to tour the Monolithic Dome Research Park. Bruco, the Texas Italian Caterpillar — with its painted boots and smiling face — opened its doors on October 15, 2022, along with the offices, classrooms, and industrial buildings at the site — plus two unique Monolithic Dome homes.
Thirty people toured our house — Arcadia Dome Home — during the annual dome tour on October 15, 2022. Most visitors came from Utah or southern Idaho, but some came from as far away as Colorado. They didn’t come empty-handed. They had ideas, sketches and questions about building their own dome home. So. Many. Questions.
When the Dallas Observer wrote about the Monolithic Dome Research Park, they connected the domes to prepping for doomsday. That misses the point. We are not preparing for the end times; we are preparing for the end … of a good book, curled up on the couch, peacefully reading while a storm rages outside.
While writing about preparing for real-world emergencies, I realized there is virtually nothing about our home, Arcadia, on this website. We built the home six years ago and posted several great stories on monolithic.org with pictures of its design, construction, and completion. It’s time to migrate and update the articles.
A Monolithic Dome home at Lake Texoma near the Texas/Oklahoma border is for sale. Situated on 3.65 acres, the house is surrounded by trees. It has three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and an airy, open floor plan.
Monolithic Constructors, Inc. — or just, Monolithic — has a new website at monolithic.com. Well, it’s not entirely new. It’s more like a homecoming.
David, Barry, and Randy South built the first Monolithic Dome home for their mother, Marjorie South, my grandmother. Instead of calling her Grandma or Granny, she had us call her “Marj.”
The colors of the Ukrainian flag — sunflower yellow and sky blue — are everywhere. The colors grace magazines, landmarks, clothing, flowers, and even cosmonauts. We are adding our own emblem of support with a Monolithic Dome twist — and a plea.
Rocketship Public Schools is constructing an early-elementary charter school in Fort Worth, Texas. The new two-story school building will feature an attached Monolithic Dome multipurpose gymnasium, cafeteria, and storm shelter. The concrete dome shell is complete and while we wait for the August 2022 opening, we can discuss two reasons this particular dome is unique - why they built it and the way it’s made.