Architects From The United States

"The coherence proof demonstrates that if one builds a structure using the A and B lines of the 31 zone star (...C lines ...used only within ...forms defined by ...A and B lines) and always follow the rule... no matter how far or intricately one builds, two extensions of two entirely different limbs of the same structure can always be locked back together in a perfect fit with a combination of our simple parts."

"We have associated the thirty-one zone star throughout with the icosahedron and... dodecahedron. It also fits perfectly with the three smaller regular polyhedra. The , the and the fit inside the icosahedron and... dodecahedron. Their vertices touch a vertex, an edge midpoint or a face midpoint of the larger figure. This regular match... positions the smaller figure so that regular patterns on the large figure project inwards as regular patterns on the small figure. In each case either five or ten small figures fit at once within the larger..."

"The joint must... be strong and inexpensive. If the joint is a ball and the A, B and C connections are... holes which the members screw into... holes of the same type... and the ends of all structural members are identical. ...[Y]ou can't make mistakes..."

"There is a mistake-proof flange joint for both A and C connections if one hierarchy is introduced. You must always orient the joint to suit A lines."

"I found out that the people at were building domes and I went up there and helped... Then they came down and helped me. ...We built the first structures from car tops. We chopped the tops out of over a thousand cars... ...[W]e paid 25 cents apiece for them. ...They’re a good building material ...except that getting stuff from junkyards ...is ...bad for your ...mentality. You... become a parasite on something you criticize... You’re feeding on something you hate."

"We built and did solar heating experiments... solar heated a dome in 1967 with a big chimney—a rock storage bin—down the side of a hill. Many of those first things didn’t... work... well. I didn’t know what I was doing."

"When you start experimenting with, say, solar heating by covering collectors with glass or plastic and feeling the warm air blow out of them... well, it’s so exciting that you just get hooked and can’t stop."

"[W]e started Zomeworks. Barry Hickman and Ed Heinz and I issued stock like a corporation and got a lawyer... [I]t was quite an abrupt change from just casually working together on a project the way we had before."

"So many... good ideas... worked... but they couldn’t keep working. Some of the first buildings we put up weren’t good buildings because they leaked. Many of those first solar heaters weren’t... very good..."

"Some of our hardware is getting pretty good, but it... doesn’t make economic sense for most people. ...[O]ur zomes and heaters and so forth do not yet compete on a dollar basis with... conventional counterparts. It’s very exciting intellectually to work with these ideas but their validity will not really be proven until they start to replace... things they’re meant to replace."

"The Skylid has no switches or wires or motors... Instead, the unit contains a series of louvers. Each... is supported and balanced so that it hinges easily around its center and... the louvers are connected with a tie rod so they’ll open and close simultaneously. ...[M]ounted on one of the panels are two canisters—one on the outside and one inside ...connected by ...tubing. ... ...with a very low ...can expand ...in one canister and ...condense in the other with a temperature difference of... 1 degree Fahrenheit. This shifting of the Freon’s weight will open and close the... louvers... and the... sun—even the shade of a cloud—produces... enough temperature variation to boil the Freon from one container to the other. ...[A] locking chain... secure[s] the panels anywhere from full open to full close... to override the automatic mechanism."

"I want to build buildings and design systems that are beautiful and simple and that really work. ...It’s not ...exotic or earthshaking to fill 55-gallon drums with water, paint them black and place them in the walls of a home for use as solar collectors ...but it works."

"Our present accounting system... can only discourage good house design. If the natural solar contribution to house heating from windows is ignored, then the designer knows this... No tax incentives—no credit to the sun in ERDA's graphs."

"Now that the experts have started this infantile accounting system, which evidently finds us... independent of the sun, solar energy will be admitted only so long as it has been properly collected, stored and transferred."

"[W]e would be much better informed if alongside every graph showing our use of oil, coal and uranium there were also an indication or the total energy received from the sun. Since we can't do without it, let's not omit it from our accounts."

"Why wouldn't it be fair to expand the slice—4% (1973—Bureau of Mines) given to hydroelectric power by a similar factor of efficiency—for the solar energy consumed in raising the water to its working head?"

"If you drive to... buy a newspaper the gasoline consumption appears. If you walk—using food energy—the event has disappeared from sight..."

"Every time the sun shines on the surface of a house and especially when it shines through a window there is "solar heating"...According to the NSF/NASA Energy Panel of 1972 the percentage of thermal energy for buildings supplied by the sun was too small to be measurable. ...Shouldn't we recalculate the energy consumption of every building assuming it were kept in the shade all day and... attribute the difference to solar energy? ...I would guess the average shaded fuel consumption to be 15% higher..."

"Legislation aimed at encouraging the use of solar energy equipment by subsidizing... certain hardware must end by being pathetic and blundering."

"In the case of the United States a conservative estimate of the solar energy received in one year might be... Twenty nine thousand three hundred quadrillion Btu as opposed to the 62 quadrillion shown as used during 1968 by the U.S. Bureau of Mines."

"If you... remove the electric clothes dryer and install a clothesline the consumption of electricity drops slightly, but there is no credit given anywhere on the charts and graphs to solar energy which is now drying clothes."

"If you install interior greenhouse lights the electricity... is faithfully recorded. If you grow the plants outside no attempt is made at an accounting."

"The 's energy study shows the U.S.'s energy consumption in 1968 at... 62 quadrillion BTU ...[T]he average daily caloric intake is... 10,000 BTU/day/person—about 1.2% of the total consumption listed by the Bureau of Mines. But this... doesn't appear... on the graphs. Nuclear energy with 1% does... The food is solar energy. Why is it not included?"

"If we use the figure of 0.5% efficiency (Ayres and Scarlott)... we have consumed... 2,000,000 BTU/person/day of sunlight in producing the 10,000 BTU/person consumed. Solar energy then fills over 2/3 of the new energy pie."

"[I]t is very important to examine what the limits of an accounting system are—to know what the numbers and quantities... really mean."

"[O]ur next concern in heating the building is what keeps the earth warm..? What supplies the United States with the energy to maintain an average temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit as it spins in empty space at absolute zero? This is a heating contract that no oil company would be quick to try and fill."

"The design of houses can be stilted by such graphs."

"If you purchase certain kinds of hardware to exploit solar energy it will be accounted for and credit will be given to the sun. If you depend on more customary old-fashioned uses of solar energy, growing food, drying clothes, sun bathing, warming a house with south windows, the sun credit is totally ignored."

"A sniper scope or camera... that shows... temperatures as... colors would be an enormous help to the investigator. 30 minutes with such... could be as valuable as a week's work... without it. ...[N]ature ...treats you to such a view of the window or skylight with a pattern of frost. ...[S]eals ...[are] the entire problem."

"The effect of clothes and blankets on heat loss is naturally investigated by everyone."

"The great problem with movable insulation is cracks. A door, shutter, or curtain is placed... The optimist notes the R value... but does not achieve it."

"A crack... of 2 in2/ft2... can conduct 1/3 Btu/ft2hr°F."

"A [1974] test on conventional window shades showed... 1) A roller shade inside a with 1/4" gaps at the sides of the shade reduced heat loss through a single glazed window by about 28%. 2) A drape drawn in front of the... window reduced heat loss by about 6%. 3) A venetian blind reduced heat loss by 7%.During the summer the shading devices reduced heat gain by the following... 1) white, opaque roller shade 50% 2) venetian blinds (slats at 45%) 18% 3) venetian blinds (slats closed) 29%"

"Tests done at Zomeworks on 45° sloped skylights with our insulating Skylids installed beneath a single pain of glass show a reduction of heat loss of about 75%... The louvers average 3" thick, have aluminum skins and are filled with figerglass—most of the heat loss occurs through air leaks..."

"Tests done by thermal decay of a glass aquarium show a U factor of the naked glass of about 1 1/3 and of the glass covered with Nightwall, of about 1/3."

"Movable insulation can... be used to prevent heat gain. ...[T]he best position ...is outside the glass rather than inside."

"ZW is a privately owned corporation. We are not supported by federal grants. We depend on your business for support."

"The tendency is not to care about spending somebody else's money—so even at this time when we're supposed to be conserving energy we're instituting policies that make people conserve less."

"You don't need to have a [government energy] policy... there already is a policy—it's each individual's policy. We need the government for some things like the armed forces, but not in the marketplace."

"We don't have a shortage of fuel... gas is still cheap and we have an abundance of coal and uranium. The goals might encourage energy conservation—but it would aid in energy conservation if we all dropped dead, too. Energy conservation is not an end in itself—no one really gives a damn about energy conservation—it's happiness that people are concerned with."

"Drop City, Colorado, a rural vacant lot full of elegant funky domes and ditto people, has been well photographed and poorly reported in national magazines. Visitors and readers... assumed that the domes were geodesic Fuller domes, which some... are. But most... were designed by another guy who designed by another geometry: Steve Baer."

"This tabloid contains the crystallographic theory and junkyard practice behind Baer's domes: from how to distort a polyhedron without affecting connector angles to how to chop out a car without losing your foot. ...Baer's theory is unique in architecture. So is his practice; instead of dying of dissertation dry rot, his notions stand around in the world bugging the citizens."

"High above the roofs of... Martineztown, one of Albuquerque's oldest s... a growing army of... structures...point south to capture sunlight... [for] two large buildings... Zomeworks Corporation, one of the nation's earliest companies."

"Founded in 1969... some of the buildings were called "zomes"—or "dodecahedral structures"... Others were heated in a simple way with... "passive" solar heating."

"I have applied for a patent on this structural system. The patent is assigned to Zomeworks Corporation. The predecessors of this system are the octet truss and the MERO space grid system. The relative potentials of these systems are discussed briefly by a comparison of their geometric possibilities."

"The forms possible using this system are limitless; there is no attempt here to explore these possibilities—the examples shown are small probings. The booklet describes the mathematics of the process that creates these limitless forms."

"The , because of its shape and the arrangement of its structural members is extremely strong, but its uses are limited because of the inflexibility of its shape. It is always part of a sphere... any variation would destroy the structural properties... It is complicated in structure and simple in shape. Zomes are simple in structure and complicated in shape."

"The regular polyhedra are like seeds from which growths may appear. They are the connecting joints for the zonohedra."

"The and the are duals of each other—the vertices of one match the face midpoints of the other and vice versa."

"Solar energy advocates are continuously humiliated by being shown "energy pies." Slices are assigned to coal, gas, oil, hydroelectric and even nuclear. but is evidently too small to appear."