![]() Here, bursts of rain might drench their colonies, so they build, well, domes up in trees.Īnd then there are creatures who live in portable domes – our many turtle friends. In drier zones around the world you’ll find termites underground, seeking protection from predators in the depths of the soil. Or consider the termites of our ecosystem. Mariola domes, Byzantine chambers of honey and pollen.Unlike European honeybees who create sharply angular honeycombs with hexagonal building blocks, out in our forest the stingless mariola bees build domes! But consider our mariola bees, those Little Angels of the Forest who make the finest medicinal honey in the world. First, there was this leaf we found a few years ago bearing the design scheme of some artistic insects.ĭoesn’t that somewhat remind you of Rafa’s Fibonacci design? Okay, maybe that’s a stretch. But let’s dive deeper into rainforest design and see if we can build a “biomimicry” case for a dome. How does a dome fit into the natural environment of a neotropical jungle? Well, you could ask the same thing about a cube – it’s not like you see lots of perfectly square or rectangular structures out in the rainforest. He was the perfect counterpart to Terry’s artistic elegance, and with our encouragement he created a Fibonacci-like snail design.īut it’s a dome in the rainforest, some might say. ![]() Plus, he used to design toys as a child and grew up to become an acrobat, juggler, chef, and clown. Rafa was the perfect design partner: he knew the nuts and bolts (except there aren’t any) of aircrete construction, he’d successfully built domes around the world, and he was just loco enough to roll with our crazy design challenges. ![]() We forged a great connection with one of the course instructors, Rafael Bravo, and set out to create with him a novel form that would resonate with our rainforest world. This from the website of Domegaia: “While building The Gibran Center in Thailand, Hajjar developed an innovative way of building beautiful low cost AirCrete domes that has gained international recognition. He founded DomeGaia in 2014 to answer the global demand for his innovative low-cost housing designs.” We at Finca Luna Nueva both participated in the Brave Earth course and witnessed the construction of several splendid domes on the Brave Earth campus, so our inspiration for the dome concept came from just up the path to our neighbor. Hajar is the author of The Return of the Prophet, the sequel to Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece The Prophet. The aircrete dome instructors came from an organization called Domegaia, the brainchild of Hajar Gibran, the great nephew of Kahlil Gibran. Our neighbors to the west, the Brave Earth Community, recently offered a course on constructing “aircrete” domes.
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