Category: Geodesic Domes

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What’s the difference between a Zome and a Dome? We get the answer

from Russell Towle.

(From the “Whole Earth Catalog”)

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Russell Towle, mathematician, amateur geologist, local history writer, currently working on an article about zonotopal tilings.

Which reminds me that you actually mention zomes versus domes on your blog. Zome is a word coined by Steve Baer as I recall, based upon “dome,” the difference being that the geodesic dome of [Buckminster] Fuller was formed upon a network of triangles, wheres zomes are bounded by zonogons, a zonogon being a convex, centrally-symmetrical polygon. A rhomb is a zonogon, so are all regular polygons with an even number of sides, but a zonogon need not be regular.

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Speaking of Geodesic Domes,

Here’s a few:

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The Michael Powers Dome in Miramar

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The Kelmore Avenue Dome, Moss Beach

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Snap-together “hothouse” dome, El Granada

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Treehouse dome for the Pat Levitz children, Los Gatos (designed/built by John Morrall & Mark Schlegal for an art class at San Jose State, early 1970s.)

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Miramar Tidbit


For years and years at Highway 1 and Medio Road in Miramar there was a tall wooden pole that had obviously been a sign post, advertising something, but what? You couldn’t see anything because the sign had been nailed over with wood.

One day a local decided to take the pole down and when he did the sign beneath was revealed to read: Palace Miramar Hotel. The wonderful photo by photographer Maria Demarest shows the stop-action thrill of the pole coming down–the most exciting event to occur on the ultra-quiet Coastside of the 1970s–but, sadly, I have no visual record of the sign itself.

(Photo: Another view of the geodesic dome that attracted a lot of attention in 1970s Miramar. See earlier Miramar post)