MY DOME, YOUR DOME!

Hello! This week I couldn't post anything beacuse of my busy work schedule. It was the project deadline of EU and I was preparing 2 youth exchanges to apply.

Today I would like to share one of the topics of the youth exchanges that I was working on. THE GEODESIC DOMES!!

As I am working in a environmental friendly asociation, this year we decided to separete a budget for an environmental education project. Our project is based on building a Dome House on a land in the mountains of Madrid.

What is it and why is it eco friendly?

"A geodesic dome is a structure built in an almost spherical shape, a structure made from struts set on large circles. Because of its curved walls and ceiling, these domes use approximately a third less surface area to enclose the same volume as a traditional box home. In fact, the geodesic dome has the highest ratio of enclosed volume to weight of any man made structure. This allows less heat to escape through he walls in the winter and less air-conditioned air to escape in the summer. Additionally, the aerodynamics of the rounded walls force air to travel efficiently around rather than bouncing off of walls, keeping energy consumption to a minimum. Geodesic domes are superior to traditional square homes. They are lighter, require fewer materials, are more efficient, are structurally more sound , and are more cost effective."

So some technical information about this structures:

"The Dome House is simple, since it is a prefabricated building with a small number of parts. Each Dome Piece is light and easy to carry, making the assembly quite easy. Because the construction of the Dome House requires only minimal manpower and a very short period of time, it is possible to reduce the substantial amount of labor costs."

"They can be use for any purpose like a home, winter house or children play ground etc."

"The triangle is a very stable shape; for example, a force applied to the corner of a rectangle can deform it into a parallelogram, but the same force will not deform a triangle. This makes geodesic dome buildings highly resistant to such forces as snow coverings, earthquakes, wind, and even tornadoes. "

And about the proyect??

I called this proyect "Dome Sweet Dome" and it is an environmental project based on the construction of ecological Geodesic Dome Houses as I mentioned before.

We will gather 20 young people from different countries in order to create an activity that they will learn to design and build their own Geodesic Dome Houses and the ecological benfits of this style of life during 10 days in an interactive way.

With this project we aim to raise young people’s awareness about thow to sustain an ecological life and promote the environmental friendly way of living, giving them a tool that they can apply to their lives.

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If the project will be approved by EU, The activities will be based on the non-formal and informal educational working methods: workshops, courses, excursions, team activities, energizers, discussions, presentations and interviews of participants in the project. After learning theorically the history, benefits and usages of the Dome Houses, the participants will learn technically how to build and create one by themselves. They will contribute the project presenting how these kind of structures are used in their countries and how they can promote it and apply what they learned to their home towns.

The program will be like this:

At the beginning they will receive some theorical workshops on various topics such as what is a dome, which are the benefits of building a dome, what materials are used in construction, budgets ... After the informative workshops, they will begin to create their designs with teams where they will exchange their ideas. Each team will create a design. After this phase they will work on the planning of the constructionand also the internal and external coating of the dome. In the end, they will start making their domes using the ecological materials. It will be in following order:

1. Selection and cutting of woods.
2. Elaboration of the triangles.
3. Montage of the structure.

After construction young people will have the opportunity to decorate the interior of the dome.

The ultimate goal of the project is to promote a healthy life, based on environmental protection and show them an eco-attitude in all areas of human activity, such as those related to food, aesthetics, the use of energy, experiences of leisure, transport or construction etc. To sum up, we aim to impact young people to change their habits which has negative effect on the nature by using the construction of domes as an excuse for learning.

We will find out the results on the april. I am very excited about this project and hoping to start working on it soon.

I hope you like it. Thanks for reading.