Jonathan Zimmerman has been solving the energy crisis for almost 30 years. As a young architect coming of professional age during the energy crisis of the early '70s, Zimmerman threw himself into the then-new field of air-formed domes, buildings that he claims can be heated and cooled for a fraction of traditional construction. Three decades later, with electricity and natural gas prices heating us out of house and home, the Fairfax architect is still not sure people are ready to listen. "It hasn't happened in 30 years," he says. "We're not going to change unless we have to. We're perfectly happy to buy the energy lemon." That's not stopping him. It never did. "The fire never went out," says, Zimmerman who, at 56 still calls architecture a "calling." That calling came at 17. He'd already been ushered into the engineering department at Lehigh University in his home state of Pennsylvania. Everybody was convinced the young Zimmerman would make a fine electrical engineer, everybody but Zimmerman. He quickly transferred across the country to the Idaho State University, an architectural school where the only doctrine was that his work "must not look like anything else." He worked summers at an architectural firm in Pennsylvania and devoured every journal and article he could find on design and new construction techniques. Zimmerman's swoon over architecture was interrupted long enough for Vietnam and a stint as an officer in the U.S. Navy, and he found himself entering the profession during the first rumblings of the original energy crisis. The environmental movement was finding its footing and the young Zimmerman was convinced it was a time for new things. "I knew we could not build the way we've been building for hundreds of years," Zimmerman says. A friend had shown him an article about air-formed domes. The domes incorporate the maximum interior/minimum exterior concept of geodesic domes but without many of the geodesic's design limitations. "I saw that and said 'Wow, that's for me,'" says Zimmerman. The domes that had him so instantly enraptured are made with large bubble-like tents. Built to a prescribed shape and size, the fiberglass reinforced nylon balloons are inflated with airlocks for the workers to enter. Polyurethane foam is then sprayed on the insides of the tent/balloon and steel re-bar is laced in a grid pattern the interior surface of the foam. Concrete is layered over the re-bar and foam leaving openings for the doors and windows. When the concrete hardens it creates a structurally sound, super-insulated shell. They can be built in an endless variety of shapes from simple domes to elongated organic shapes. The magazine article Zimmerman had seen described the work of Stan Nord Connelly in Boulder, Colo. When Zimmerman got out of the Navy, he moved to Boulder. He helped build homes, gymnasiums, warehouses, agricultural storage buildings. He helped pioneer the techniques. Thirty years after learning about the technology, he is no less enthusiastic. He confesses to a case of "messianic fervor." "You have to have a zealot's spirit," says Zimmerman He claims the domes are cheaper to build, maintenance free and have nearly unmatched insulation values. The domes are seamless, spared of the joints and connections that allow "infiltration" of cold air. The thermal mass of the concrete holds the heat in the winter and the dome's shape helps shed heat in the summer. "You've got your overhangs designed so you get the solar energy in the winter and you get shade in the summer," he says. "The Romans were doing this 2,500 years ago." Zimmerman remembersa gymnasium he worked onin Colorado where the owners didn't bother installing a heating system for the first year and a half. He visited one of these air-formed domes in Arizona that was comfortably cool without air conditioning in September when most of the state is still huddling under the cooling vent. He doesn't even bother controlling his enthusiasm. "We have the ability to combine existing technologies to make self-sustaining buildings," he says. "Does nature build in 90 degree angles and flat planes?" he asks. "Less surface area, better insulation and thermal mass!" he chants. And yet, he knows not everybody is listening. Most people aren't ready for domes, Zimmerman says. They're too caught up in "status and cultural symbols." "They're worried about what people will think," he says. He knows about the bias. For a man who has devoted his career to building domes, Zimmerman is clearly uncomfortable with the term. "The problem with 'dome' is is that its been considered almost a pejorative term in some circles," says Zimmerman. For too many people, he notes, the word "dome" is instantly associated with Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes which offer little design flexibility andmeans to integrate a building into the landscape. The people who buy his designs for homes, he says, are often retirees. "They say 'I'm retiring, and I want a house that takes care of me.'" Zimmerman laughs, "They are Conservatives all right, they want to conserve their energy and their nest egg." Debbie Garlock, who lives in one of Zimmerman's domes 9,000 feet up the Colorado Rockies, says the house does have it's benefits. Even in the winter, "that one little stove downstairs heats the whole house." They do have some maintenance issues with the woodpeckers who have taken to trying to neston the dome's exterior, but on the whole, the Garlocks are very happy in their dome. "It has a real peaceful, restful feel," she says. "I have other people who say it looks like a kind of whale," Garlock says. "Somebody else thinks it looks like a mushroom." Zimmerman is currently working on a home outside San Diego. He says it is the first California home he's worked on in two years. There are none in Marin. "We are slow to change, but the cost of energy is my best advertisement" says Zimmerman. Zimmerman's enthusiasm doesn't allow much room for frustration. He notes that "larger forces are at work" in California's energy dilemma. He's knows he can't change everybody's mind. Longtime friend and architectural colleague David Barrett lauds Zimmerman's "singular vision" while also worrying that his friend is "swimming up stream with this." "That kind of path is not an easy path," Barrett says. Barrett still lives in Colorado and works on efficient land use "urban village" developments and more traditionally shaped super-efficient sustainable designs. Zimmerman's domes can be a tough sell, Barrett says. "You can make such a strong rational argument for it ... but then there are all these other layers of things." "Our memories, our images of home are around more conventional spaces with conventional pieces," Barrett explains. "Sometimes I think he needs to look more broadly." For Zimmerman, his niche is broad enough. He's a specialist - "There might be a dozen (architects) on the planet who are doing this," he says - and the Internet is helping him reach the kind of people who are ready to live in a super-efficient, earth-friendly dome. His Web site is www.zdomes.com. "I've gone from 300 hits a month to 1,200 hits a month in the pastyear," he says. He's still solving the energy crisis. He's just doing it one dome at a time. |
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