Home sweet dome

The circle has always been associated with the sacred and the sublime. Ancient beliefs refer to it as life itself, which is cyclical and never-ending. Some psychologists believe that the circle represents the Self, a space that acknowledges the holy or sacred in you. Other philosophies see it as an ancient symbol of God. It’s a shape that encompasses, that takes in and protects, like a mother embracing her children. The circle permeates our subconscious and is reflected in the way we go about our daily lives. Look at how basketball players or prayer groups huddle in a circle. Or how guests at a cocktail party tend to form little circles, which become bigger to accommodate more people joining in. Truth is, the circle is the most natural and most comforting shape in our lives.

For Illac Diaz, head of MyShelter Foundation, nature’s most basic shape, when used with the four elements (earth, water, fire and air) has a more practical meaning – to offer a solution to the problem of homelessness using tried-and-tested ancient techniques. Thus, the existence of the first ever dome house in Negros Occidental.

Not exactly your typical abode, the dome house at first glance could unnerve some people. Standing right smack in the middle of Hacienda Fe amid a pebble-strewn walkway, the three-vault structure elicits various reactions from people. Some say it looks a lot like the houses in Star Wars’ Tatooine, while others comment how it resembles African clay huts. Some are even inclined to think that it’s a contemporary igloo design. LOTR fans might even see shades of The Shire in the Hobbitoon-shaped houses. We even started thinking about the structures of Moon Base Alpha of Space 1999 fame, and began imagining about alien invasion.

Before our mind began to work overtime, Diaz slowly brings us back to earth to explain what these dome houses – which he also calls rainbow houses – are all about.

"We’ve all seen the signs. Global warming and increase in carbon levels in the atmosphere have resulted in climatic changes. This is why we have these supertyphoons, the El Niño, not to mention the fact that nature is acting up what with recent earthquakes and tsunamis that devastated properties and killed hundreds of thousands of people. We’ve all seen what immense flooding and erosion have done to people in Quezon, or the earthquake in Baguio years ago. And we’re pretty helpless when it came to rebuilding and rehabilitating our homes," he laments, adding that the problems of poverty and homelessness, not to mention rampant corruption and terrorism which displaces a lot of communities, make the search for solutions all the more difficult.

Diaz says that the Philippines has ceased to be a place where majority of people can have permanent homes. "We need to give these people permanent shelters and I’m not just talking about the cardboard type of dwelling where living conditions leave a lot to be desired," says Diaz, who is also the brains behind Pier One, a dormitory for seamen located in Corte Real, Intramuros, an urban solution to the lack of affordable and decent living quarters for seamen and other migrant workers who need a temporary place to stay while in the metropolis.

What this country needs, he says, are uncommon solutions to common problems, and he believes the egg-shaped houses are his best bet. Patterned after the system of US-based Iranian architect Nader Khalili and the techniques of Unesco Earth Architecture in India, the houses – also referred to as earthbag building system – will not only answer the need for housing, but will also lower the costs of building a decent shelter.

Diaz, who went to India and met with Khalili in California last year to study the system, says it’s time that we start solving the problem at the grassroots level. "People in poor and disaster-prone areas are always constructing and rebuilding their houses each time a natural calamity happens. The government, instead of constructing infrastructures and meeting basic needs, are also bogged down by rehabilitation efforts, which in turn siphons off the budget to the endless rebuilding of damaged properties. See, we always have potholes of human crisis that we always end up filling with charity, new loans, etc. with. To make it worse, you have unscrupulous businessmen and middlemen who take advantage of the situation."

Diaz explains that building codes are supposed to protect people but they have also started favoring imported materials, and the system favors suppliers of more expensive industrialized materials, all for the sake of following the so-called building standards. With the dome houses "we can show the world that even a non-architect can come up with radical solutions."

Well, it’s radical all right. Soil, crushed sugarcane ash or bagasse, lime, sandbag or ordinary rice sacks and barbed wire – these are all you need (with lots of creativity, of course) to build a house that’s said to withstand even the strongest wind, rain, flood and earthquake. Since they are made from earth, the houses are also said to be termite-proof (thanks to the lime poisoning) fire-proof, and because of its thick layer, are also bullet-proof structures. Not bad, eh, for those with trigger-happy neighbors who can’t avoid fiddling with guns come New Year’s Day.

In its most simple form, not counting the use of machines to fill sacks with earth, building a dome house is as simple as playing house. As soon as one has the right specs, all one has to do is to start filling the sacks with soil, laying them out in a circular form and layer upon layer of alternating materials of rice sacks and barbed wire, with the bagasse acting as cement (which, by the way, was invented by UP engineering student Deorex David Navaja), one can finish a dome in less than a day. It’s really not much different from making a multi-layer peanut butter sandwich, only the latter is flat and linear.

"The egg-shape structure won’t easily collapse because pressure is distributed equally along the compression structure," says Diaz. This somehow reminds us of those old science experiments on egg shells which, when pressed equally on both ends, felt so stable and sturdy.

According to Diaz, these dome houses effectively reduces wood consumption for rural housing by 99 percent, something which we’re pretty sure tree huggers would rejoice in. Statistics show that one-sixth to one-half of the world’s resources are being used for shelter. In the process of using these resources, watersheds are destroyed and poisoned. Add to that is the 80 percent drop in the use of electricity. The curved roof lets in enough sunlight which is distributed evenly inside while the presence of wind catchers and vents minimizes the need for airconditioners. The dome shape of the house, in other words, helps facilitate the circulation of air, letting in cool air and letting out hot air.

In ancient times, curved roofs were built in the warmer regions. "The curved roof breaks and softens the harsh wind… a dome or a vault touches the wind and creates air currents inside," Khalili says in one of his books. Thus, the house’s interiors will be airy and comfortably shaded. As Diaz says, they found out that it’s 20 percent cooler inside than outside.

In one of the experiments to determine the sturdiness of the house, Diaz says they were only able to crush 1/3 of the dome house. In California, a building city council tested the soundness of a dome hut and found out it could withstand the pull of almost 27,000 pounds of accumulated pressure. "This is equivalent to the force exerted by a truck full of concrete dangling off a cliff," says Diaz

Diaz and his team also created computerized models to see if it could withstand soil erosion and flooding. The result? The water went around the house and, in case the soil below it gives way, the weight of the structure will be equally distributed and won’t tip over. Even with a great gush of water, the house is not expected to be torn apart, unlike what happened to the wooden and cement houses destroyed in the flashflood in Quezon.

Diaz relates the experience of a co-journeyman (or individuals who have built dome houses and trying to propagate the knowledge; it’s said there are only six of them in the world) from South America with flashfloods. "With his house standing on the path of the flood, he decided to build a periphery ring with 20 earthbags. When the floods came rushing in, his house was the only one left standing," he relates.

From the 40 sq.m. plus 10 sq.m. mezzanine, 6.5-meter-high Negros prototype, one could build a dome house as high as 30 feet. "We’re still trying to perfect the technology using our own materials," says Diaz. He has also experimented with lahar for use in lahar-hit areas, as well as mixing crushed glass, and also filling up the house with raw pottery and cooking the whole structure with bunker fuel. That makes the whole building more strong and durable. "We’re also trying to talk to advertising agencies and find a way to recycle the tarpaulin – those huge billboards displayed along major roads – and transform them into bags in place of rice sacks," says Diaz, who is continuously looking for grants to be able to perfect the technology. One particular need is to buy machines similar to a cement pump to be used in filling up the bags.

Letting his creativity loose, Diaz also thinks the technology will be useful in building microdams, which can be put up in mountainsides and build fishpens, among other things. He’s thinking of forming a model eco-village in Cebu where the community will be taught how to build raincatchers in the form of huge earthen tanks so that they have an ample supply of potable water.

Obviously, the sense of community or, in local parlance, the bayanihan among Filipinos, is being called forth in this kind of house-building. Since it’s not at all complicated to build, even a kid can help out by filling in the rice sacks, for instance.

The livelihood aspect will also come in with the coming of tourists and living in these novel houses. Rural barangays, he says, can supplement their income from fishing or agriculture to tourism and residential businesses. "They can build these houses and live in them temporarily. Now, if they have saved enough income to move into a house of their choice, they can easily tear the dome houses down or leave it alone," says Diaz, who is thinking of operating a franchise system and offering it to NGOs on the condition that these organizations will follow the foundation’s social precepts. He also hopes the local government will be receptive to the idea and cooperate.

Diaz clarifies that he has no intention of battling it out with conventional house builders, architects and engineers. He says he’s just looking at all the possibilities and giving the disadvantaged an option to live in structures that will truly shelter them from natural and man-made calamities. In effect, he is going by Khalili’s concern for "people who cannot afford an architect, cannot afford manufactured building materials, cannot afford anything but their own hands and the earth beneath their feet." For this Rumi follower, everyone has the right to build a shelter using the "simplest of materials available to all."

Being in a free world, Khalili and company’s earth-based technology hasn’t escaped criticism. Some detractors feel that the technique is obsolete, that the structures only last a few years, and that the style may not be acceptable in certain areas mainly because it looks different. As is the wont of society today, whoever doesn’t follow the trend will almost always be ostracized and left out, ridiculed even.

For Diaz and fellow journeymen however, it’s all about going back to the basics. He believes that dome houses address the immediate need of countless people – shelter from the storm, both manmade and natural. "Let’s go back to a time when people mattered. It doesn’t take a lot to be human. All we have to do is to try. The answer is all around us," he says.

As the mystical Persian poet Rumi wrote, "Earth turns to gold in the hands of the wise." Need we say more?

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If you want to know more about dome houses, call 301-0825 or 0918-9403513, or e-mail at Illacdiaz@gmail.com.