http://www.flickr.com/photos/8152259@N03/

Inside wide angle of SNEC Oswego 2006 corrugated dome

http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/cgi.randomeroof1.jpg

or,

http://ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/synergeo/photos/view/5564?b=32&m=f&o=0

From:

http://www.asianjournal.com/?c=55&a=19703

April 22nd, 2007

A Guimaras day

"The paved road eventually ended, and changed into a steep stone trail, so we trekked the final uphill stretch to get to a small barrio where, Eugene said, could be found probably the best examples of traditional bahay kubo built of bamboo and cogon perched on steep mountain slopes or edges of limestone cliffs.

The dense foliage, slopes, cliffs, and bahay kubos were still there, but not the bamboo and cogon. Corrugated iron sheets now roof the houses and an assortment of plywood and recycled wooden paneling had replaced the traditional Ilonggo intricate bamboo latticework walls.

Traditional materials, especially cogon, are now scarce. Constructing with traditional materials, residents told us, is so tedious and time-consuming that they now prefer replacing their cogon roofs with corrugated sheets."

My truck is loaded with a 250 kg of steel, 300 nuts and bolts, assorted tools and I'm heading toward Oswego, NY in the morning to prepare for next weeks SNEC livingry workshop. I have 30 sheets of cgi, all fabricated and ready for assembly. Each one has three 4 degree vertexes. The sheets overlap so we might end up with an improve Indlu 1958 corrugated dome prototype, just 48 years after the first cgi Bucky dome.

Pictures and progress as they come in.

http://synergeticists.org/snec.announce.meeting.2006.08.html

Dick Fischbeck

The next move is away from the barrel shape and then move toward an octahedral, 4-way spiral "pinwheel" layout. There appear to be advantages applying this layout even before the testing of it. For example, all the elements can be identical instead of having left -hand and right-hand elements. This reduces work and complexity.

The flat elements should make a tighter dome. Cylindrical elements don't lay parrallel to each other when they are overlapped like shingles. Conical elements do have this relationship. Gaps between the corrugations can be chinked with the materials on hand.

Flat ribbed cgi element

http://phlog.net/entry/400808

Here's a picture of the latest modified cgi element which will go into the dome we are building in Oswego, NY next August. It is beginning to show obvious signs of compound curvature! Comments are welcomed and encouraged.

cgi dome element

SNEC Oswego 2006

I'd like to see your personal research into the history of FEMA. As Bucky said, making profit is the opposite of making sense. This Bechtel link is nothing more than corporate propaganda. Of course big corporations are getting involved, just as long is there is profit from it. That's their legal mandate to their stockholders. Corporations are socio-economic ploys.

http://benfrank.net/blog/2005/09/09/katrina-questions-congress-must-demand-answers-to/

Andy

Here's something revisited! Bucky discovered the venturi "chilling machine", remember? But insulation of some kind will be required without a doubt. Fabric hanging inside the shell should be a simpe way to solve the problem in combination with optimal venting. A metal shell is about strength. Obviously that's not all there is to a safe, comfortable shelter but it does comes first.

Sunday, 18 December 2005, 00:39 GMT

Andaman tsunami victims still homeless

By Subir Bhaumik
BBC News, Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar islands

'Blast furnaces'

"Mr Negi says local non-governmental organisations objected to the initial plans to use pre-fabricated metallic structures for permanent housing.

So fresh designs had to be worked out to make the houses with as much locally-available material - wood and engineered bamboo - as possible.

Tin-made temporary shelters offer no respite from the blazing sun

"The tin-and-metal prefabs where the tsunami victims are now sheltered are like blast furnaces in the hot and sultry climate of the Andamans.

"If their permanent houses are made of the same material, they will not be able to live in them," says Samir Acharya, who heads the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology (Sane), the island's biggest NGO working on environment and indigenous peoples issues.

"The tribes people would have to keep their pigs in them and sleep in the jungles at night if their houses were made of metal," says Mr Acharya.

The administration has now taken heed of the NGOs and local people.

"The permanent houses will now have an outer structure made of iron while the wall material and the rest will be wood and bamboo," says Mr Negi. "

Blazing Sun

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4527640.stm

I think I've got the hang of live-links! Here are a few more images related to cgi shelters.

parasol dome
East Belfast Dome
Dome Section

I'm practicing live-links so please bear with me.

This is a meter long corrugated paper model pictured inside and out.

http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/paperbarreldome.jpg
http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/paperbarreldome.jpg

paper_model
paper_model2

The most recent idea:

CGI vertex

Hi Dick,

I really like this idea and I think your work to provide these shelters is very admirable. I saw Aiden Hartley's doumentary on the Dandora slum on the BBC last night and it was hard to watch.

http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/U/unreportedworld2006/kenya.html

I don't know how ductile CGI is but I can imagine the less material you have to shape and rivet, the better. I was thinking of something as simple as a spherical dodecahedron with the facet centrums projected to the unit sphere. Not a Randome, but all the panels could be pre-cut and supplied as a kit. Each panel would be larger than the required dimension in order to get the Randome 'overlap'. The dome could be truncated along spherical equator or not at all. In which case the floor would be pentagonal.

Best wishes,

Nicholas

"...in the battle between the world and the mind, it is the mind that is destined to win." Colin Wilson.

Four sheets joined. This is the first experiment to build a dome out of cgi.

CGI element

These are concave 2.5x4 panels of cgi. More pictures after assembly.

http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/curved_cgi.jpg

I hope this link stays available for a long time because the pictures on it are very important. This is where-we-are with corrugated metal shelters. Not too advanced. Yet there is nothing wrong with cgi as a construction material. In fact, it is a very good shelter material. We can do better and make this resource go much further than it is now using design science, recent discoveries and experimentation.

Current method

Notice the tension elements in the roof.

Tension elements-quanset hut
Tension elements-cylinder

A compound curved shell would not require those tension elements. There is a fundamental difference between simple and compound curved structures.

Jeff Thomson

If Jeff can make a boot, we can make a dome!

http://www.artnews.co.nz/covers/cover-autumn05.jpg
http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issue100/thomson.htm

Here is the latest addition to the all-things-cgi list.

http://www.corrugatediron.org.au/
http://www.corrugated-iron-club.info/

The big corporations are starting to get involved.

Here is the for-profit side of what-we-are-trying-to-do!

"CH2M Hill and Bechtel National Corporation were the two companies
tasked by FEMA with the mission of housing thousands of Mississippi
families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. Since the first emergency
housing unit was installed Sept. 11, 2005, CH2M Hill and Bechtel have
assisted in housing nearly 37,000 displaced families throughout
Mississippi ."

http://www.bechtel.com/ppKatrina.htm

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=10470

After some sucess constructing vertex elements with 2.5"x8" sheets of corrugated sheets I'm going to try it with half sheets. The result will be a 4x4 foot square element which should be easier to assemble.

Richard Fischbeck
Randome, LLC
18 Belfast Rd.
Freedom, Maine 04941
207-382-3051

RanDome ShelTer

http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/index.html

Here's a how-to of randomes. Of course, paper plates are not CGI sheets but the principle still applies.

Here's a link to a picture of the original randome model built in February 2000, in Minneapolis.

http://www.freewebtown.com/randome/paperplate_hub_dome.jpg

-------

CGI Randome Shelter

Metal
Simple
Geodesic
Lightweight
Adaptable
Teachable

The randome design strategy is ultra-simple. Because the mathematics is
elementary, anyone, even young children, can build a model of a randome
with a few minutes of instruction. We can build strong geodesic
structures without a degree in mathematics. The key is using vertex(or
corner) components as the structural unit element. This is a ripe
design approach for a global shelter. Research and prototyping is in
progress.

Randomes are built with vertex elements instead of edge or face
elements. The elements can be identical for ease of fabrication. The
vertex elements are joined in an overlapping manner just like shingles.

Vertex cone elements or components are defined by an angle of curvature
and an area. The curvature can be positive like a balloon or negative
like a saddle. Any shape randome is possible. The number and area of
the vertex elements determine the size of the structure. This way, any
surface can be a geodesic surface.

For a complete sphere, 720 degrees divided by the number of vertexes
equals the angle of each vertex cone element. For a half sphere, the
formula is 360 degrees divided by the number of vertex cone elements.

Paper plates make good models of sphere.

Six paper plates can be folded and joined together to build a cube.
Each plate is a face or side of the cube.

Twelve paper plates can be folded and joined together to form a cube.
Each paper plate is an edge of the cube.

Eight paper plates can also be folded and joined together to form a
cube. This is like a randome. Each paper plate is a corner of the cube.
A ball with, for example, one-hundred paper plates constructed with
corner components rather than side or edge components is much easier
and the process requires a single simple calculation. This is why the
method might someday be used globally to shelter people without homes.

Making a ball out of overlapping-corner-components, in other words
cones, is governed by this short equation.

720 degrees/number of components=the angle of each corner.

For a cube this angle is ninety degrees. For a tetrahedron, which has
four corners, the angle is 180 degrees. For a geodesic dome with 100
vertex elements this angle is 3.6 degrees.

Richard Fischbeck
Randome, LLC
18 Belfast Rd.
Freedom, Maine 04941
207-382-3051
http://www.freewebtown.com/randome

That sounds like a great idea. let me know if you would like to have a custom forum for specific issues that you are interested in tracking and discussing !

Best,
- jochen

--Site Administrator--
jh@bfi.org