As climate shocks mount, designers seek the holy grail: disaster-proof homes

Jon duSaint, a retired software engineer, recently bought property near Bishop, California, in a rugged valley east of the Sierra Nevada. The area is exposed to forest fires, strong daytime and strong winds – and also heavy winter snowfall.

But Mr. duSaint is not worried. He plans to live in a dome.

The 29-foot-long structure will be clad in heat-reflecting aluminum shingles that are also fire-resistant. Because the dome has a smaller surface area than a rectangular house, it is easier to insulate against heat or cold. And it can withstand strong winds and heavy snowpack.

“The dome shell itself is basically impenetrable,” Mr. duSaint said.

As the weather becomes more extreme, geodesic domes and other resilient home designs are gaining new attention from more climate-conscious homebuyers, and the architects and builders who look after them.

The trend may begin to remove the inertia underlying America’s struggle to adapt to climate change: Technologies exist to protect homes from severe weather — but these innovations have been slow to penetrate mainstream housing, leaving most Americans increasingly exposed to climate shock, experts say. .

Ride out the storm

In the atrium of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, students from the Catholic University of America recently finished assembling “Weatherbreak,” a geodesic dome built more than 70 years ago and briefly used as a home in the Hollywood Hills. It was avant-garde at the time: About a thousand aluminum rods bolted together into a hemisphere, 25 feet tall and 50 feet wide, evoking an oversized metal glow.

The structure, designed by Jeffrey Lindsay and inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller, has taken on new relevance as the Earth warms.

“We started thinking about how our museum can respond to climate change,” said Abeer Saha, the curator who oversaw the dome’s reconstruction. “Geodesic domes emerged as a way that the past might offer a solution to our housing crisis, in a way that hasn’t really received enough attention.”

Domer is just one example of the innovation underway. Houses made of steel and concrete can be more resistant to heat, wildfires and storms. Even traditional wood-framed homes can be built in ways that greatly reduce the chances of serious damage from hurricanes or floods.

But the costs of increased elasticity can be about 10 percent higher than conventional construction. That premium, which often pays for itself in reduced repair costs after a disaster, still presents a problem: Most homebuyers don’t know enough about construction to demand stricter standards. Developers, for their part, are reluctant to add resiliency, fearing that consumers won’t be willing to pay extra for features they don’t understand.

One way to bridge this gap would be to tighten building codes, which are set at the state and local levels. But most places don’t use the latest code, if they have any mandatory building standards at all.

Some architects and designers are responding on their own to growing concerns about disasters.

On a piece of land jutting into the Wareham River, near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Dana Levy watches her new fortress of a house go up. The structure will be built with insulated concrete forms, or ICF, creating walls that can withstand high winds and flying debris, and also maintain stable temperatures if the power goes out — which is unlikely, thanks to solar panels, backup batteries and an emergency generator. The roof, windows and doors will be hurricane resistant.

The whole point, according to Mr. Levy, a 60-year-old retiree who worked in renewable energy, is to ensure that he and his wife don’t have to travel the next time a big storm hits.

“There’s going to be a lot of people spilling out onto the street seeking scarce public resources,” Mr. Levy said. His goal is to ride out the storm, “and actually invite my neighbors over.”

Mr. Levy’s new home was designed by Illya Azaroff, a New York architect who specializes in resilient design, with projects in Hawaii, Florida and the Bahamas. Mr. Azaroff said using that type of concrete frame adds 10 to 12 percent to the cost of a home. To offset the extra cost, some of his clients, including Mr. Levy, choose to make their new home smaller than planned—for example, sacrificing an extra bedroom for a better chance of surviving a disaster.

Build with steel

Where the risk of forest fires is high, some architects switch to steel. In Boulder, Colo., Renée del Gaudio designed a house that uses a steel frame and siding for what she calls a fireproof shell. The decks are made of ironwood, a fire-resistant lumber. Under the decks and around the house, there is a weed barrier topped with crushed stone, to prevent the growth of plants that can start a fire. A 2,500-litre cistern can supply water to hoses in case a fire gets too close.

These features increased construction costs by as much as 10 percent, according to Ms. del Gaudio. That premium can be cut in half by using cheaper materials, such as stucco, that would provide a similar level of protection, she said.

Del Gaudio had reason to use the best materials. She designed the house for her father.

But perhaps no form of resilient home design inspires devotion quite like geodesic domes. In 2005, Hurricane Rita devastated Pecan Island, a small community in southwest Louisiana, destroying most of the area’s few hundred houses.

Joel Veazey’s 2,300-square-foot dome was not one of them. He only lost a few shingles.

“People came to my house and apologized and said, ‘We made fun of you because of the way your house looks. We should never have done that. This place is still here, when our homes are gone,” said Mr. Veazey, a retired oil worker.

Dr. Max Bégué lost his house near New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, he built and moved into a dome on the same property, which has survived every storm since, including Hurricane Ida.

Two features give domes their ability to resist wind. First, the domes are composed of many small triangles, which can carry more load than other shapes. Second, the shape of the dome ducts wraps around it, depriving the wind of a flat surface on which to exert force.

“It doesn’t blink in the wind,” said Dr. Bégué, a racehorse veterinarian. “It sways a bit – more than I’d like it to. But I think that’s part of the strength.”

“Looking for something different”

Mr. Veazey and Dr. Bégué got their homes from Natural Spaces Domes, a Minnesota company that has seen demand rise over the past two years, according to Dennis Odin Johnson, who owns the company with his wife Tessa Hill. He said he expected to sell 30 or 40 domes this year, up from 20 last year, and has had to double his staff.

The typical dome is about 10 to 20 percent cheaper to build than a standard wood-frame house, Mr. Johnson said, with total construction costs in the $350,000 to $450,000 range in rural areas, and about 50 percent higher in and around. cities.

Most of the customers are not particularly wealthy, Mr. Johnson said, but have two things in common: an awareness of climate threats and an adventurous streak.

“They want something that will last,” he said. “But they’re looking for something else.”

One of Mr. Johnson’s more recent clients is Katelyn Horowitz, a 34-year-old accounting consultant who is building a dome in Como, Colo. She said she was drawn to the dome’s ability to heat and cool its interior more efficiently than other structures, and the fact that they require less material than traditional homes.

“I like quirky,” Horowitz said, “but I love sustainable.”