hey guys jenna here welcome to my channel where i feature alternative home tours
in sedona arizona there is one home that has been turning heads for decades some describe
it as looking like a dozen giant eggs while others think it has a more futuristic or sci-fi aesthetic
today we're stepping inside the sedona dome home
we interviewed the current owners as well as the original builder
to describe what it's like living inside of a dome and why they enjoy sharing it with others
this house spoke to me from the beginning because i never was interested in a traditional home
i was always looking for something that was unique you think about architecture through
the ages this is a very old shape of architecture a rounded building and yet also it's very modern
we always thought that was the smart way to build and so if we ever had a forever home we
always thought a monolithic dome would be a very cool way to do it i see a house potentially like
a sculpture that you get to live in and so i think it's important to have an environment that really
brings out the best in you that can create a sanctuary i wanted to show people that there
was an alternative way of living and they don't have to live in a square box you look up at the
corners in your room that you're sitting in and what use are they you know for spiders
maybe in a dome house everything is so smooth and it's it's so comfortable on your mind and
it makes you feel different and when i tell people that most of them don't believe me but
all i got to do is step inside of one of these buildings once and you feel it
the original idea behind this home was built as a home of the future it was open to the public
more than 800 people at a time would come each day to see this house and how it was constructed
to be inspired to maybe break some boundaries about how homes can be built more efficiently
and also more economically you can build houses like this for
less than half of a normal house and they have insulation factors of r85
it stays cool in here it's something like living in a cave down under the ground the amount of
money you would save on building a house like this you could heat and cool it the rest of your life
what makes this construction interesting opposed to any other type of construction they come in
and they bolt down these giant balloons and fill them with air once the balloons are fully
inflated they spray high density foam three to six inches all the way around until it hardens
then they come back in and they tie rebar grids 10 inch grids all the way around giving it structure
and then they spray the concrete on the interior very interesting to build i mean when we was
building it we had people coming here and standing around just watching us do it they were amazed in
the morning there was nothing here but after about an hour these big balloons are coming up
on the outside the exterior it looks like a parachute you can see the seams of how
the airform was pieced together and sewn together i love that hand-built look of it
there's just two of us we had a lot of space and it was more space than we needed
when we first walked into this dome home we immediately knew that this would make
a great airbnb we have plenty of space to carve out a wonderful house within a house
so here we have dome number one
one of the most fascinating aspects to these domes is that they're connected one to another in a
circle allowing for the continuous space this dome here is the largest dome with a height of 32 feet
i've always been interested in alternative construction i wanted to have something unique
open and something that didn't constrict me
so now we're up in the loft you can see lightly the grid pattern of the rebar showing as it goes
around and around and around like a beehive one of the things that brings great joy to laura myself
is being able to host people and have people in our home this home is too large for just us two
it's about six thousand square feet but what we do have is plenty of sleeping quarters for people to
come and spend time with us we have single beds we have king size beds we have full size beds
and we have queen beds in addition we have other sleeping quarters available that can be converted
for more people so as we move from dome to dome you'll see this beautiful arch as it merges from
one dome to the next and now we're entering in to dome number two this is the great room it's about
30 feet in diameter it gives us this tremendous amount of natural light because it has the big
huge five skylights both on the ceiling and on the walls to allow us to be bathed in natural light
so i wanted to share with you the acoustics of the space
one of the interesting aspects to these domes you may even hear it as i speak it's the acoustics we
have two functions that are happening within these domes when you build a structure that
comes to a point it creates what's called a focal effect but the sound beams down at the very center
in our domes as you walk across the center all of a sudden you'll feel the power of the
acoustics pounding down upon you at the same time there's what's called the whisper effect
on the exterior of the room which is bouncing around and around and around the room giving
this a magical auditorium type of sound and one of the fun thing about this home
is how we've been able to find specific furniture that seems to really fit the vibe
here we have this really unique chair but it also reclines so you can go to the position of
using it as a recliner here we're sitting in our sunken living room and it gives us some feeling
of texture some feeling of of sharing space where we can get together on a personal level
this originally was a pond with a fountain in the background when we bought the home i immediately
tore out the fountain the stones everything that was around this area and built this stage over
that space with that i added this large eight foot long fireplace i added cabinets and i built it in
so i could grab a hole of the curvature of the wall but also the concave of the wall so we were
able to come up with something that was uniquely interesting that was as important as the original
fountain and it really added value to the home and really gave us more of an ambiance to the space
the longer we live here we're finding that there's a unique effect that happens there's
something about living in a worm with no flat walls i don't know what it is about
human consciousness and how that works but if you look back into the earliest
days of indigenous societies they built round structures there's something about
this kind of space that affects the brain a peacefulness a sacredness
we feel very fortunate to have three and a half acres right here next to the village of sedona
and now this courtyard which adds a whole another dimension to the home by the fact
that we are surrounded in this beautiful circle of domes which allows my wife and i to be on one
side and for our guests to be on the other here in this courtyard we have a beautiful fire pit which
guests use and sometimes we join them in the evening to look at the stars and have conversation
welcome to our standing stones what we like to think of it as dome hinge the concept here is
is that we have 10 standing stones in a circle they're 10 feet apart it's my understanding that
stonehenge is also divisible by 10. so i wanted to follow that mathematics the original idea when you
build these kind of circles is you're looking for orientations to certain solstice events
certain astronomical events but in this case we went with geometry instead so now what we have is
this beautiful 32 foot circle and now it's ready for the next stage we want to put in a labyrinth
but not a traditional labyrinth with rocks and stones we don't we want to have a plaza we don't
want to have things to trip on so we're going to be doing an embedded labyrinth that matches the
circumference of this circle and this is the final step to really bring this whole thing alive
we want to have a place for people to do yoga and other types of stretching and exercise activities
part of our mission is to little by little make this house a green home and adding more and more
technology that works with the environment in this case we've added 27 solar panels
in addition to the 27 solar panels we also installed a house battery
so that we can be as efficient as possible during peak hours of the day
winston churchill said we shape our buildings and then they shape us there seems to be this
catch-all term nowadays that you see people referring to that they're looking for their
forever home and this home has provided that for us people need to really experience this
to truly understand the domes we love that when people walk in and they've got this the big
smiles and they're looking around and they've got that aha moment because that kind of joy
helps us relive our first moment of walking into this space and just the magic of it thanks for
watching this week's tour make sure to check back soon for another alternative home tour
and in the meantime check out my playlist for some of the most unique spaces around the world
you