Catenary Adobe, Hassan Fathy, and Natural Building in Natural Disasters

Shortly after Rico may have mentioned these dome's, I came across a story in my book:

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Some time ago, I recall seeing the process being done somewhere-- perhaps on YouTube and/or on the Grand Designs show.

Given the recent earthquake discussion, I've been wondering about natural building and how it stacks up to various natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. I mean, people have been building this way for a long time.

Earthquake test at UBC a little after 4:10:

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Re. the vid above, I have also read about how round buildings do well in earthquakes, which seems to make sense, given their "horizontal arches".

How do you think the aforementioned domes stand up?

BTW; Don, I was at an Ikea store today and discovered a "Hoosier" for kids. A child was playing with it and seemed to just love it as the parent agreed since they had one at home. It had a small built-in dry sink, a microwave, 2-burner stove and some suprisingly robust storage on top and below. (Designs meant for children can be inspiring.)

Reply to
Warm Worm
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Here it is :)

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Reply to
Warm Worm

Microwave in a Hoosier? Heaven forbid! I wonder if I can build one outta pine? Have you priced oak lately? Stuff is on the moon!!!! Was just looking at oak veneer a few minutes ago and even that stuff is exhorbitant. Whats a poor white share croppers son to do??? I have lots of oak here on my property but harvesting and machining it is horribly expensive. True Hoosiers are made out of oak exclusively.

Just looked on the US Ikea site and didn't see it. Their java script laden site made my hard drive whine.

Reply to
creative1986

HA! I should have looked ahead!

Reply to
creative1986

It's the only Hoosier I've seen with a microwave and non-functional sink and stovetop. ;)

Are you going to put a sink/stove in/on yours? None I'm seeing seem to have either, but I'd like both in mine for a full blown workstation. I have about 5 feet to work with, if not including a pull out in front (a la Hoosier) or the drop-leafs on either side (which would bring it to at least 8 feet, which would be great.) I might want to add casters. Last week, I wandered into some kind of, mainly antique furniture, flea market and spoke with one of the guys renting one of the stalls about transforming some of the old and often gorgeous hutches and dressers, etc., for use (mainly) for the washroom. He said it's almost all the rage now (must be all those glossy rags), with people buying many of those pieces to put sink-holes in the tops of them. Some of them are a bit on the high side what with their legs and unintended re- use heights, but there the legs are often shortened or lopped off entirely for a floor-flush cabinet look. The way I see it is if you can have two sinks in some of these things, you can quite easily have one sink on one side and a 2-burner stovetop on the other and maybe an under-the-counter fridge under the stovetop and convection or microwave oven overhead, with some storage space here and there. I'm anxious to model the thing in ACAD. Maybe we can compare notes.

Reply to
Warm Worm

Drawing furniture is a whole different animal than drawing buildings. The metrics are all diff. Drawing the construction drawings for furniture is where I envision 3d design could be of benefit. I've designed a few things, using my general knowledge of drafting and design and of building design but I was still left wondering about some things. Frequently, after getting away from it for a couple days, I'd come back and look at what I'd drawn and wonder WTF was I thinking. My lathe table for example. I tend to go overboard from the beginning and then revise things back to an orderly scale. Materials costs and all that, you know. Also, all my drawing templates are not useable due to the size of the things I'm drawing. My building dims for example are waaay too big and so is my text, and lineweight, etc., etc., so I had to create all new templates for drawing smaller stuff. Then there's that whole issue of nominal material dimensions, fastener sizes, etc. All that before you even get to the idea of actually designing anything. In the end, after 1/2 a dozen renditions of my proposed lathe table I've decided that when it warms up I'm just gonna go out in the shop and start making it. I have a basic idea in my head, the same one from the beginning, so I'll try to make it like the image in my mind and make adjustments as I go along. Woodworking seems to be more of an art than a science.

Regarding the old furniture, hoosiers, etc. Every coupld days I scope out the antique section of craigslist for Bloomington, IN to see whats up and its mostly people trying to unload junk at exhorbitant prices. Every now and then there's a gem though. My problem is that I am hurtin for space to put stuff. Like an antique upright piano from 1921 and the owner only wants $100 for it. Where am I gonna put the thing? If I sit it in my unheated workshop all the wood will be havoked because of the low temperatures. Next winter will be different. The workshop will be fully insulated and sheathed and a wood burning stove will be cooking 24/7. I'll prolly put a futon in the corner and just stay out there. heh (still have about 4 more bundles of R38 insulation to install in the ceiling and then 32 sheets of 1/2" OSB sheathing on the ceiling. The walls have been insulated and sheathed for 2 years.) Its in the teens today which means its in the teens in the shop too so no insulation will get done today.

Reply to
creative1986

That's the creative process at work.

Autodesk hasn't done anything to automate this? For the house, I've yet to add dims, and I'm so far just designing-in the stuff I want into the same file as the house, although I just finished rough-designing some "industrial-style" tracklights (essentially scaled-down theatre spotlights in a track) in their own file that will be imported. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;)

Let us know how it goes.

Well do you actually need a hoosier, or do you want to sell it, or cut your design-teeth with it as a design-project, or what?

Sounds cozy. Send us a postcard.

Reply to
Warm Worm

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