[Music]
[Music]
I’m here to talk to you today about is
this miracle of creating a solution to
the need for housing in the world and I
think a lot of us here aren’t suffering
that but so it’s really for our children
and their children and for so many
people on the planet and you know
shelter is number one it’s the highest
priority on the list of human needs in
researching for this talk I was amazed
at the numbers according to Wikipedia
nearly 2 million people in this country
are homeless globally it’s 1.5 billion
people are without adequate housing
that’s 5 times the entire population of
the United States a middle-class family
will spend the best years of their lives
working to pay for the roof over their
heads and we claim to be the most
intelligent lifeform on planet Earth
most of God’s creatures build their
homes instinctually with little time and
effort you don’t see the birds and bees
enslaved to a mortgage yet here in the
land of the free and the home of the
brave 50 thousand of our brave veterans
are homeless living in the streets I
know we can do a lot better I was born a
builder my dad was an inventor and he
taught me at a very young age that
anything is possible if I ever uttered
the words but dad I can’t he would stop
me and say son there’s no such word as
can’t I went on and studied engineering
at SDSU and then had a successful career
as a designer builder and I loved
building but I love mother nature even
more and I was like probably so many of
you I was profoundly affected by the
writings of my great
khalil gibran would that I could gather
your houses into my hand and like a
sower scatter them in forest and meadow
would the valleys were your streets and
the green path is your alleys that you
might seek one another through vineyards
and come with the fragrance of the earth
in your garments well it was a great big
wake-up call for me in my 30s when I
realized that I was working in an
industry that was destroying our
ecosystems the old-growth forests that I
held as sacred were being mowed down and
all the countless species that depended
on them I simply couldn’t go on without
a solution and I didn’t have a solution
then so I changed my life and I
dedicated myself to doing whatever I
could to keep the spirit of gibran alive
at least within my own heart but
backstage
my mind was ceaselessly searching for
the solution then when I was building
the Gibran Center and got a picture here
I built our meditation dome out of clay
bricks and cinder blocks it was the
lowest price material in the area and it
was very inexpensive to build and it
just turned out so beautiful then my
brother-in-law came along and asked me
to help him build his dream house he
always dreamt of having a hobbit house
and so we built this and the pictures of
Steve’s dome home inspired people all
over the world and their enthusiasm
inspired us but there was a problem clay
bricks and cinder blocks offered no
insulation value so it was really
impractical for a big part of the world
and my vision was to solve the problem
for
world and I needed a better material so
I enrolled in a research project at the
University of YouTube and when I
discovered air cream I felt like I was a
miner who’d been digging in the dirt for
decades and at last I struck gold air
creek is a lightweight insulating
material that has the amazing qualities
of concrete I’ll just put in here so you
can see it’s a you know like concrete
it’s low maintenance it you know does
it’s not harmed by water it resists mold
it doesn’t rot or decay matter of fact
it grows stronger with time it’s
impervious to termites and insects and
rodents and pests and of course it’s
completely fireproof and because its
main ingredient is air it’s very
inexpensive to build an ecological so
it’s been around for a long time
actually it was even signs that it was
used in the Roman Empire but then for
thousands of years or more than a
thousand years the the recipe was lost
and then reinvented again in Scandinavia
about a hundred years ago but it’s been
really slow to make its way into the US
the companies that do offer it will
charge more for it because it’s a
specialty product special large heavy
industrial equipment expensive equipment
and costly foaming agents and so this is
where we come in after some years of
experimenting and testing different
foaming agents and perfecting our
equipment we developed a simple way
low-cost way of making air Crete using
dish detergent to make the foam and the
equipment weighs less than 30 pounds and
will fit in a suitcase and if you can
make pancake batter you can make air
cream it’s really that simple it’s like
mixing up flour and
water and adding a little whipping cream
and letting it set overnight now there
is a you know come it has a lot of
compression strength you know you can
drive a car on it but it’s very brittle
so you know breaks easily and the
lighter weight you make it the more
brittle it is it’s one thing they say
about concrete it will crack and air
Crete is even more brittle and so what
we do is we laminate a layer of fabric
on the surface some reinforcing fabric
which makes a composite material that
has both the tensile strength and
compressive strength and it’s a lot like
sheetrock and I brought a piece of
sheetrock with me just because I really
want you to understand this because this
is a kind of revolutionary you know
there’s no one building like this except
we build the interior walls of our of
our you know modern buildings with this
material and it’s made of gypsum which
like air Crete is very brittle has no
tensile strength because a thin layer of
paper is glued to the surface
you know it’s strong it doesn’t you know
it doesn’t break easily but if you just
simply make a thin cut through the
through the paper there’s no strength in
it and so we’re this is a way we’re
building our dome homes it’s very
inexpensive but it actually has a lot of
structural integrity
we sandwich the air Crete between these
layers of reinforcing fabric and unlike
Jibson and paper which are destroyed if
they get wet air Crete and the
reinforcing fabric aren’t harmed by
water and they won’t rot or Kate rot or
decay they literally could last for
centuries you could actually make a
swimming pool out of this structurally
reinforced air Crete and if your house
is soaked in a flood or a hurricane
there’s really no damage done to the
basic structure now how many of you here
remember what you learned from the Three
Little Pigs in kindergarten
what happens if you build your house out
of sticks right the big bad wolf blows
it down right well the aftermath oh I
think I have a picture here to show you
yes the aftermath of the Hurricanes had
show us clearly what Mother Nature
thinks of our stick frame houses what I
want to propose is that instead of stick
frame houses we build structurally
reinforced air creep dome homes that
aren’t going to get blown down by the
big bad wolf or destroyed in a flood or
consumed by a fire a structurally
reinforced air Crede own home is much
more durable and cost but a small
fraction of conventional housing a dome
home is a safe home and it’s no wonder
that they cover some of our most
prominent buildings like the US Capitol
state capitals churches cathedrals
mosques and temples Architects and
engineers have known for centuries that
a dome home a dome is the strongest
structure to withstand the forces of
nature the Pantheon has been defying
gravity for over 2,000 years
it’s the largest non reinforced concrete
dome and I you know it’s really a
testament that a well-designed dome
doesn’t even need reinforcement and I
want you to try this at home before you
crack your egg in the frying pan for
breakfast put in your hand in djenne in
a long ways and lock your fingers and
without
oh well you know what I’ve been doing
this so many times every breakfast to
make sure and every time I’m amazed you
know this must have gotten cracked when
it was set down on the table because you
try it at home you can’t break it
my other jokes on me but you know nature
loves domes because they’re so strong
now I really go home and try this
because I want you to have that
experience not this one
yeah don’t you’re aerodynamic and you
know they’re they’re super strong and
you know every living thing from the
tiny little cells in our body to the
mighty mother earth herself is
surrounded by an electromagnetic energy
field and when you put your energy field
in a box you limit its functionality you
naturally feel more alive in a dome now
of course you know with modern
technology 3d printing fabric forming
special molding processes there’s you
know the possibilities are endless what
we can do with this material and as an
engineer I’ve always assumed that would
be the direction I would go but I’m
discovering something so magical with
these workshops we’ve been doing that
you know as children we all love
stacking and balancing blocks and when
we come together and build like this
it’s just so much fun and so satisfying
when air creed is so lightweight and
easy to work with
no one ever works up a sweat and it’s
it’s amazing and I think I might have
even a pitcher here
what’s going on here yeah you know we
use these compass arms we call them that
tell us where to position the blocks
there were just putting the window and
with the fabric form or the reinforcing
fabric around it and yeah anyway we just
have such a great time you know applying
the fabric is like putting on paper
mache and the sense of community that’s
created honor that I realize that you
know this simple basic kind of
grassroots method is maybe more
practical and more essential for really
what needs to happen because we so much
need to reconnect with each other and
create community and our workshops are
bringing people together from all over
the world we had 35 people from 14
different countries at the first
workshop and as we build we build
friendships and out of our friendships
miracles begin to happen the first
workshop we built a dome for a school in
Mexico in last February and now in
December were going back to build what
may be the first sustainable orphanage
in collaboration with our new friends
from the Earthship Academy in July we
met some leaders of a veterans movement
and now in November were launching the
yes Academy it’s a Healing Center
founded by doctors who served in
Afghanistan we recently taught a group
of kids how to make air cream pizza oven
and you know who knows what they’re
going to do with the enthusiasm that
they went away with we’ll find out and
we’re just broke ground actually the
last week on our new dome gaya off-grid
training center right on the ocean in a
remote part of the Big Island Hawaii and
it’s a great test site because of its
exposure to the hurricanes and tsunamis
that hit there and it’s also lava zone
one the most likely to be covered
molten lava so we’re gonna really be
able to put the air-crane through a test
there you know worst-case scenario will
just end up with some really cool
underground air creek caverns yeah and
you know if we can build heaven on earth
anywhere we can do it in Hawaii we’re
collaborating with a native Hawaiian
organization called Aloha in action and
we’re you know we want to teach the
Hawaiian people how to build because the
way they’re building there is so
impractical for that climate and we want
everyone to learn I see a time when
people will learn at a very young age so
but by the time they’re of age when
they’re going to leave their home leave
their mothers and fathers homes all
their friends and family will just get
together it’ll be one of the highlights
of their life like a ceremony or ritual
and would build a home for them and when
it’s done the mother and father will say
now go to your womb you know it’s it’s
it’s like Victor Hugo said there’s
nothing so powerful as an idea whose
time has come and this is an idea that
promises to satisfy our most basic human
need in a low-cost elegant way at a time
when that need is so great I want us all
to learn so that we can all be as free
as the birds and the bees to make our
dreams come true now we know the way now
it’s time to live it Aloha
you
[Applause]
you
[Music]
I’m here to talk to you today about is
this miracle of creating a solution to
the need for housing in the world and I
think a lot of us here aren’t suffering
that but so it’s really for our children
and their children and for so many
people on the planet and you know
shelter is number one it’s the highest
priority on the list of human needs in
researching for this talk I was amazed
at the numbers according to Wikipedia
nearly 2 million people in this country
are homeless globally it’s 1.5 billion
people are without adequate housing
that’s 5 times the entire population of
the United States a middle-class family
will spend the best years of their lives
working to pay for the roof over their
heads and we claim to be the most
intelligent lifeform on planet Earth
most of God’s creatures build their
homes instinctually with little time and
effort you don’t see the birds and bees
enslaved to a mortgage yet here in the
land of the free and the home of the
brave 50 thousand of our brave veterans
are homeless living in the streets I
know we can do a lot better I was born a
builder my dad was an inventor and he
taught me at a very young age that
anything is possible if I ever uttered
the words but dad I can’t he would stop
me and say son there’s no such word as
can’t I went on and studied engineering
at SDSU and then had a successful career
as a designer builder and I loved
building but I love mother nature even
more and I was like probably so many of
you I was profoundly affected by the
writings of my great
khalil gibran would that I could gather
your houses into my hand and like a
sower scatter them in forest and meadow
would the valleys were your streets and
the green path is your alleys that you
might seek one another through vineyards
and come with the fragrance of the earth
in your garments well it was a great big
wake-up call for me in my 30s when I
realized that I was working in an
industry that was destroying our
ecosystems the old-growth forests that I
held as sacred were being mowed down and
all the countless species that depended
on them I simply couldn’t go on without
a solution and I didn’t have a solution
then so I changed my life and I
dedicated myself to doing whatever I
could to keep the spirit of gibran alive
at least within my own heart but
backstage
my mind was ceaselessly searching for
the solution then when I was building
the Gibran Center and got a picture here
I built our meditation dome out of clay
bricks and cinder blocks it was the
lowest price material in the area and it
was very inexpensive to build and it
just turned out so beautiful then my
brother-in-law came along and asked me
to help him build his dream house he
always dreamt of having a hobbit house
and so we built this and the pictures of
Steve’s dome home inspired people all
over the world and their enthusiasm
inspired us but there was a problem clay
bricks and cinder blocks offered no
insulation value so it was really
impractical for a big part of the world
and my vision was to solve the problem
for
world and I needed a better material so
I enrolled in a research project at the
University of YouTube and when I
discovered air cream I felt like I was a
miner who’d been digging in the dirt for
decades and at last I struck gold air
creek is a lightweight insulating
material that has the amazing qualities
of concrete I’ll just put in here so you
can see it’s a you know like concrete
it’s low maintenance it you know does
it’s not harmed by water it resists mold
it doesn’t rot or decay matter of fact
it grows stronger with time it’s
impervious to termites and insects and
rodents and pests and of course it’s
completely fireproof and because its
main ingredient is air it’s very
inexpensive to build an ecological so
it’s been around for a long time
actually it was even signs that it was
used in the Roman Empire but then for
thousands of years or more than a
thousand years the the recipe was lost
and then reinvented again in Scandinavia
about a hundred years ago but it’s been
really slow to make its way into the US
the companies that do offer it will
charge more for it because it’s a
specialty product special large heavy
industrial equipment expensive equipment
and costly foaming agents and so this is
where we come in after some years of
experimenting and testing different
foaming agents and perfecting our
equipment we developed a simple way
low-cost way of making air Crete using
dish detergent to make the foam and the
equipment weighs less than 30 pounds and
will fit in a suitcase and if you can
make pancake batter you can make air
cream it’s really that simple it’s like
mixing up flour and
water and adding a little whipping cream
and letting it set overnight now there
is a you know come it has a lot of
compression strength you know you can
drive a car on it but it’s very brittle
so you know breaks easily and the
lighter weight you make it the more
brittle it is it’s one thing they say
about concrete it will crack and air
Crete is even more brittle and so what
we do is we laminate a layer of fabric
on the surface some reinforcing fabric
which makes a composite material that
has both the tensile strength and
compressive strength and it’s a lot like
sheetrock and I brought a piece of
sheetrock with me just because I really
want you to understand this because this
is a kind of revolutionary you know
there’s no one building like this except
we build the interior walls of our of
our you know modern buildings with this
material and it’s made of gypsum which
like air Crete is very brittle has no
tensile strength because a thin layer of
paper is glued to the surface
you know it’s strong it doesn’t you know
it doesn’t break easily but if you just
simply make a thin cut through the
through the paper there’s no strength in
it and so we’re this is a way we’re
building our dome homes it’s very
inexpensive but it actually has a lot of
structural integrity
we sandwich the air Crete between these
layers of reinforcing fabric and unlike
Jibson and paper which are destroyed if
they get wet air Crete and the
reinforcing fabric aren’t harmed by
water and they won’t rot or Kate rot or
decay they literally could last for
centuries you could actually make a
swimming pool out of this structurally
reinforced air Crete and if your house
is soaked in a flood or a hurricane
there’s really no damage done to the
basic structure now how many of you here
remember what you learned from the Three
Little Pigs in kindergarten
what happens if you build your house out
of sticks right the big bad wolf blows
it down right well the aftermath oh I
think I have a picture here to show you
yes the aftermath of the Hurricanes had
show us clearly what Mother Nature
thinks of our stick frame houses what I
want to propose is that instead of stick
frame houses we build structurally
reinforced air creep dome homes that
aren’t going to get blown down by the
big bad wolf or destroyed in a flood or
consumed by a fire a structurally
reinforced air Crede own home is much
more durable and cost but a small
fraction of conventional housing a dome
home is a safe home and it’s no wonder
that they cover some of our most
prominent buildings like the US Capitol
state capitals churches cathedrals
mosques and temples Architects and
engineers have known for centuries that
a dome home a dome is the strongest
structure to withstand the forces of
nature the Pantheon has been defying
gravity for over 2,000 years
it’s the largest non reinforced concrete
dome and I you know it’s really a
testament that a well-designed dome
doesn’t even need reinforcement and I
want you to try this at home before you
crack your egg in the frying pan for
breakfast put in your hand in djenne in
a long ways and lock your fingers and
without
oh well you know what I’ve been doing
this so many times every breakfast to
make sure and every time I’m amazed you
know this must have gotten cracked when
it was set down on the table because you
try it at home you can’t break it
my other jokes on me but you know nature
loves domes because they’re so strong
now I really go home and try this
because I want you to have that
experience not this one
yeah don’t you’re aerodynamic and you
know they’re they’re super strong and
you know every living thing from the
tiny little cells in our body to the
mighty mother earth herself is
surrounded by an electromagnetic energy
field and when you put your energy field
in a box you limit its functionality you
naturally feel more alive in a dome now
of course you know with modern
technology 3d printing fabric forming
special molding processes there’s you
know the possibilities are endless what
we can do with this material and as an
engineer I’ve always assumed that would
be the direction I would go but I’m
discovering something so magical with
these workshops we’ve been doing that
you know as children we all love
stacking and balancing blocks and when
we come together and build like this
it’s just so much fun and so satisfying
when air creed is so lightweight and
easy to work with
no one ever works up a sweat and it’s
it’s amazing and I think I might have
even a pitcher here
what’s going on here yeah you know we
use these compass arms we call them that
tell us where to position the blocks
there were just putting the window and
with the fabric form or the reinforcing
fabric around it and yeah anyway we just
have such a great time you know applying
the fabric is like putting on paper
mache and the sense of community that’s
created honor that I realize that you
know this simple basic kind of
grassroots method is maybe more
practical and more essential for really
what needs to happen because we so much
need to reconnect with each other and
create community and our workshops are
bringing people together from all over
the world we had 35 people from 14
different countries at the first
workshop and as we build we build
friendships and out of our friendships
miracles begin to happen the first
workshop we built a dome for a school in
Mexico in last February and now in
December were going back to build what
may be the first sustainable orphanage
in collaboration with our new friends
from the Earthship Academy in July we
met some leaders of a veterans movement
and now in November were launching the
yes Academy it’s a Healing Center
founded by doctors who served in
Afghanistan we recently taught a group
of kids how to make air cream pizza oven
and you know who knows what they’re
going to do with the enthusiasm that
they went away with we’ll find out and
we’re just broke ground actually the
last week on our new dome gaya off-grid
training center right on the ocean in a
remote part of the Big Island Hawaii and
it’s a great test site because of its
exposure to the hurricanes and tsunamis
that hit there and it’s also lava zone
one the most likely to be covered
molten lava so we’re gonna really be
able to put the air-crane through a test
there you know worst-case scenario will
just end up with some really cool
underground air creek caverns yeah and
you know if we can build heaven on earth
anywhere we can do it in Hawaii we’re
collaborating with a native Hawaiian
organization called Aloha in action and
we’re you know we want to teach the
Hawaiian people how to build because the
way they’re building there is so
impractical for that climate and we want
everyone to learn I see a time when
people will learn at a very young age so
but by the time they’re of age when
they’re going to leave their home leave
their mothers and fathers homes all
their friends and family will just get
together it’ll be one of the highlights
of their life like a ceremony or ritual
and would build a home for them and when
it’s done the mother and father will say
now go to your womb you know it’s it’s
it’s like Victor Hugo said there’s
nothing so powerful as an idea whose
time has come and this is an idea that
promises to satisfy our most basic human
need in a low-cost elegant way at a time
when that need is so great I want us all
to learn so that we can all be as free
as the birds and the bees to make our
dreams come true now we know the way now
it’s time to live it Aloha
you
[Applause]
you
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