Building Blocks: The Shape of Things to Come
What a Spring. All the wrong kinds of records are being smashed by waves of killer cluster-bomb tornados strafing the southern tier of the US. Last week, all eyes were on Bertie County, North Carolina. This morning, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantori—never someone you want to see wandering your neighborhood—is on disaster patrol in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or what's left of it.
After a while, subdivisions of shredded homes, upended cars, bark-stripped trees, smashed gas stations and pulverized shopping malls, all ringed by tangles of mangled power lines, start to look alike. Sunny suburbs transformed into war-ravaged slums in a blink. Whatever's left standing, weakened.
If there is any sliver of silver lining to be found in these dark swirling clouds of bleak, it is the hope to "build back better"—a rallying cry first raised in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and now a familiar refrain invoked in the aftermath of calamities from Port-au-Prince to Sendai.
With the help of an ingenious Escher-ish construction module called QuaDror, unveiled at the Design Indaba conference in South Africa last February, that may now not only be easier, but more affordable, too.
Invented by New York-based Israeli designer Dror Benshetrit, one of the most innovative epiphanies in building construction to come along in many years made its improbable debut in a design for a ground-based Swarovski crystal-bejeweled chandelier.
Indeed, it was in party mode that QuaDror first came to life. In 2007, Benshetrit was invited to create a chandelier for one of the Milan Furniture Fair’s glammest events: the annual Swarovski Crystal Palace exhibit, where major designers are asked to envision the various loopy things you can do with Swarovski crystals as a basic building block.
Like others in the show, Benshetrit created a lighting fixture that glittered with a thousand sparkly crystals. But its elemental form was an angular frame that sat on the floor instead of hanging from the rafters.“The geometry first intrigued me for aesthetic reasons,” Benshetrit says, “but then I realized its real structural strength was its simplicity and adaptation of scale.”
Four years later, blessed by structural engineers as "outstanding" ("the stability and load-bearing capacity of a cube with only 1/5 of the volume"), Benshetrit's clever little interlocking form is inspiring ideas for everything from bridge supports to acoustic buffering walls to emergency housing.
Since the modular QuaDror form ships flat, 1,750 "kits" can be packed into a single 40-foot container for quick, simple assembly of a home's frame, with locally-sourced materials used for floors, walls and roofs.
The first QauDror homes are planned for Brazil and Sierra Leone next year. But perhaps a few kits will find a way to North Carolina and Alabama for what promises to be a long, hot summer of reconstruction. And as the region looks to repair its battered infrastructure, perhaps QuaDror interlocking concrete blocks will play a role.
In the meantime, QauDror is in the running as a semi-finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, with winners to be announced in May.
From another dimension, no doubt Dymaxion, Bucky is surely smiling.
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CLASSIC REVIVAL
Down in Carbondale, Illinois, however, the original "Dome Home," Bucky's first geodesic domicile—and the only one he himself ever lived in—is in desperate need of a renovation estimated to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Made of plywood, chosen because it was cheap, the house has taken a beating from over a half-century of brutal winters, broiling summers and soggy springs.
An effort to restore the dome has been given new life with the recent award of a Save America's Treasures matching grant to the tune of $125,000. "He envisioned the dome as a house. It was the first dome home. It's the only one he ever lived in," says Janet Donoghue, development director of the nonprofit RBF Dome NFP, which is looking to resuscitate the worn structure.
The group has its work cut out for it. "When it was built, he said the material he needed to make it waterproof wasn't invented yet," says Donoghue. The Bucky Dome is in rough shape. Sad brown shingles cling helplessly to the outside, mold has taken hold on the inside, and many of the plywood triangles are water-damaged.
Patented in 1954, the geodesic dome, with its signature honeycomb hexagons, still manages to look cutting edge. Its brilliant simplicity and strength, as well as its "vision of the future" vibe are just as exciting to see at The Eden Project, the world's largest greenhouse built on an abandoned strip mine in Corwall, England, as it was over four decades ago at Expo '67, a 200' tall bubble of breathtaking engineering genius.
Like QuaDror, the geodesic design is both sturdy and comparatively easy to assemble, making it a tempting choice for disaster response. Intershelter domes—which can cost thousands of dollars—are sturdier than tents and, according to the company, just as easy to assemble:
Built to sustain hurricane strength winds or earthquakes and insulated to stay warm in extreme arctic sub-zero degree weather or cool in hot desert climates, these structures can be assembled in just a few hours by three untrained people. The pieces can fit in the back of a pick up truck, single helicopter sling, or a bush cargo plane and can be set up on almost any terrain.
Sounds perfect.
— J. A. Ginsburg, TrackerNews, Editor's Blog, @TrackerNews
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