Building ecovillage of storm-proof homes made of bone-like biomaterial

we are in Nevada City California kind of right in the heart of a fire country where we installed the world's first ceramic Dome our Earth shot is to make the best home on Earth the most affordable home on Earth and that actually seems impossible when you say it but at the same time this home is really introducing properties that can make it the best home the kind of beauty of the geometry combined with the fire resilience and earthquake and hurricane resilience there's no metal other than a few bolts in it no metal no wood no

concrete no petrochemicals which means there's nothing to rot nothing to rust nothing to corrode and what is this exactly what are you using it's a bioceramic so literally the same material that is used in the human body for bone repair it's actually very close to the chemical composition of bone in that it's calcium pottassium Magnesium phosphate I mean it's literally a bone home create a bone home I mean this is materials that have already been proven in nuclear oil and gas like really crit infrastructure repair critical industries that we're now applying flying to Home Building

how did you get to that CU that doesn't seem obvious yeah I was building a house with my brother after spending about seven or8 years kind of living on a wooden sailboat and just trying to figure out how to to build a home and we just started mixing uh powder and water together in a barn doing the material science research what was our ratio 1 to 2.5 we going to do half we're mixing up a batch to go into our interior base panels so we have the powders and fluids right here we're going to mix

in the smaller mixer and then it's going to go into this big irer mixer where we have the hemp fibers so the cement geopolymer will go over the hemp fibers we'll drop it out and put it into the molds so we started looking at all the emerging zeroc carbon cement materials and geopolymers and this material was actually developed at US National Labs in like the early 2000s after like a 10year R&D project for the nuclear industry it's a ceramic that has a lot of fibers in it so natural fibers like cellulose and hemp fibers as

well as like carbon fiber the compressive strength is over 15,000 PSI so four or five times the compressive strength of concrete so you don't have to use as much of it it's a ceramic in that it's technically you know Cove valent and ionic bonding just like chemical bonding process like what nature uses to form sedimentary rock and sea shells we're basically replicating that process in a controlled Factory environment another reason for this material science is because it enables very rapid kind of mass manufacturing because this material it's almost like a flash cure as it comes

out of the mixing equipment and into the mold it almost cures almost instantly so one of the awesome things about bringing in this kind of new Material Science and 20th Century manufacturing technology where every part can be exuded or injection molded and you can get exactly the geomet tree that you're looking for on each component that looks [Applause] like you see the it's all wow yeah right you can you can feel it when you come in it's like it's 100% non-toxic materials you have like light from all different directions very high ceilings so it doesn't

feel like and there's no kind of uh wasted you actually think of a corner as kind of a wasted space you walk into most houses and you look up and it's like those Corners are not being utilized they just collect dust and cobwebs and so this is a really interesting way to just they feel very expansive I mean originally domes were always kind of reserved for like the temples right because it kind of represents like the heavens and I I think you feel it when you walk in so the whole structure is made of ceramic

components that so when you when the on-site building process requires no cutting or no measuring there should really be almost no thinking you know it just goes together one way with no heavy equipment on site every part weighs less than say 30 lb essentially you build a ceramic space frame goes up in half a day with two or three people and then the exterior panels go on and maybe the next day in the interior panels on the final day so the whole structure this size Dome should go up in maybe 2 or 3 days with

two or three people so we're seeing here ceramic inside as well y it's all raw there's no paint there's no petrochemicals this is the ceramic material and you see there's like these little fibers are basically hemp fibers inside of it so it's a bioceramic hemp composite so it's interesting because these panels look like they could almost be kind of Lego bricks or something because you could swap out a window or you could put in right is it the way it works yeah you could swap things out fairly easily right off the bat people will be

able to choose any window configurations they want as many windows or opening or non-opening structurally you could make the whole thing Windows CU you still have the ceramic frame system we actually add color into the ceramic itself so we don't have to use paint and as well as the this texture that you see here is just one one example right there's a lot of different text that people could choose from and they all come together is this a sort of structural point that you see there they are yeah every point is a structural point it's

kind of like every point is the center of a sphere right yeah and so yeah all all points are just as strong as the others and you can have the whole thing be windows or you can have Windows in any of these triangles this is the beautiful thing I feel like with the geodesic dome too is that you feel really connected to the outside like your outside yet you're this is like the strongest structure in the known universe you know it's like very safe yet very connected to that because this structure is also good for

hurricanes so it's also for high wind right that yeah we're designing for like 300 mph wind loads like the highest winds that ever been recorded on earth because you just a dome is naturally aerodynamic and we're using some very very high strength composite materials I mean Buck Mr Fuller really defined the geodesic dome in the 50s and it is the lightest strongest most efficient means of enclosing space that's ever been discovered and it's kind of interesting Buckman Fuller he kind of joked that the domes that they built in the 70s and ' 80s were kind

of like wooden spaceships you know the right geometry but the wrong materials and he predicted it would be 50 to 100 years until the material science would really evolve to catch up to the new geometry does it make sense affordability wise you will never be able to build a box that costs less than this at scale because you have about 30 to 50% less materials to enclose the same amount of space and higher Energy Efficiency when you cut the surface area in half it means you have basically twice the kind of effective r value of

the space we're designing it to be able to get the home so that it's computerized so the windows tint and untint automatically the vents open and close automatically and then the light that comes through the windows hits like a thermal Mass what like a organism on Earth would do with conditions like humidity of the sand and yeah how we get to the best home on earth and the most affordable home on Earth is by going high technology that is actually replicating nature in a sense so bringing kind of ancient technology together with very future technology

to yeah to really be kind of alive or connected to the natural world one of the key things that we're going for is that buying a house can be more like buying a car and that you select your options and design and you're 100% guaranteed the price is what you have signed up for and to actually be able to get the home so that you select your options what we're doing here is another constru ction situation here is product design my background is in design in product design okay and that's also I think really what

we're doing here we're designing a product like you can have a little Studio backyard Studio or a tiny home but you can also create family homes or communal living or Villages and yeah product basically means like it's a home that you buy and that you design online where you choose your window lay out like think about okay how do I want to live how imagine how you want to live and design like your future home and because homes can look so many ways these are basically preparations for our next uh prototype which will be a

30 foot diameter Dome and it's funny because it doesn't feel like a dome here it suddenly feels just like interesting geometries yeah it creates a kind of an interesting balance between traditional housing and like really this new kind of relation to Geometry so we're just imagining like a bit bigger home to give people also an impression like how does it work we live in domes so this full family home we think it's going to be around like $150,000 wow and this is like an awesome like family home you know and quality of space that we're

creating and that's of course also non-toxic hurricane proof all mold proof all these kind of things and that's really like the technology that we're developing imagine how can you optimize your home for the actual place where you live a lot of these home construction startups today it's like the end product is still the same as everything else it's a grid of roads and a bunch of boxes in a grid system and it's like how do we build Villages that are more integrated to the natural world we feel like that's kind of an an opportunity with

the whole thing is that we want to really change the community building model like today we're still basically building communities like we were uh 70 years ago where it's like developers and Banks get together buy land build houses and sell them to people and we want to change that model where it's like the community comes together first online participates in the design of their Village and then can actually potentially participate in the construction of it seen a bed Morgan here we're on the land that GEOS ship owns and it's about 100 acres but really the

most important thing is like we wanted to make sure that we're living in domes or in round structures while we're kind of talking about this new paradigm of living outside the box this is my little home it's got the basics it's definitely feels like we're in nature I don't have to go camping cuz I'm camping all the time so it's already a neighborhood here yeah's up above you're down below yeah I mean that's experiment too right yeah there's so many ways to imagine this land slowly growing yeah so far we're just living here with the

birds and the Bears and the foxes and the coyotes that's great squirrels and the deer and SAA SAA this was actually our first machine that electrical equipment that we plugged into the power of the land in the first year that's really been awesome in the winter yeah so you plug it's an electric fauna yeah oh and there's something back there oh that's you is that tent back there that's my that's my house yeah so this is like it's like my living room starting here that's right it's total total magic to be living here yeah yeah

I have two tents on on right now because it's like one I has a bunch of guests this summer so they can come and stay over so they're very it's very nomadic I mean you could or or just P like you could put one up when needed yeah and this this this one here is actually an old one that uh ripped so I repaired it but it's great for summer you and what are these tents called a bell tent Bell tent yeah so yeah that's my home wow and there's my kitchen so you raised it

instead of just putting a tent on the ground yeah this is my little like flying saucer platform this platforms we built from wood of the land so we asked the guy with the mobile meal to come over and cut the planks and the beams yeah I just made built this with a hammer and a saw you know and you have it up because of rodents because of moisture it's really I used to live in this stent on this spot and it's awesome to live that close to nature but it really helps prevents just slightly less

interaction with insects and other animals also water you know you know there it rains so hard here at some point it was like like a foot of water here so yeah I see your natural air conditioning there yeah that's why it's like sure during the day it's hot in the tent but yeah this is uh this is it you know and it's so awesome to live so minimal I really appreciate it here and then this sponds I saw like two others last week and there's always different kind of bird families coming through on their on

their migration routes I'm actually reinstalling the stove whatever you can see it's not super cleaned up inside it's like oh yeah it's pretty nice space it is nice it's nice it's nice being up like this it's like I look out of the little screen thing and there's some mornings where you see some bears walking by and things like that you know so it's really nice to be on the platform and just look at them yeah and because I was sleeping in that tent for a while this summer and then I was like at some night

and my parents are actually over staying here and I was like hearing this bear breathe and trying to scare the bear away without waking my parents and it's like the bears actually are not spoiled here like in National Parks so they don't want to hang out with people uh I've been here like for three and a half years three and a half years in the tent yeah yeah you don't need much now little yeah stove it's super nurturing I like to see how we can find a good balance between natural and and using technology materials

and trying to avoid plastics for example mattresses are these big pieces of foam I have buckweed holes as a mattress which is epic to sleep on and with just air flowing through your bedroom all the time making up with birds and in the spring you have like hundreds of frogs in the pond and just in the later in the summer we have the cricket I see so you are aware of what's out there yeah you're aware of the Moon of the animals of the [Music] seasons this is actually the old ultimate bedroom in winter and

summer like sure what I miss most is like a kitchen in the winter time where I can invite friends to come and have dinner what are your best practices to avoid having a a bear over I never had issues with the Bears they come over and they they smell things a little bit but I've never actually had issues this is like an old truck box that's a great bear box truck box like a in the back of a pickup box ah and your stove is just an old camper stove yeah I try to just Source

most of my stuff just second hand so this what guy in the area had on top of a piece of furniture I found that down the road no that's great that's nice to have a kitchen table here right it's such an awesome climate here when it rains it pours like insane but so many days in the winter is actually beautiful as well the moment you start living in a house you disconnect from all that all that kind of stuff if you're more in it then it's way less of a barrier you know because it's just

where you're at it's not like oh now I don't want to go outside no I'm outside already people are so afraid to give up things that they think are so important they're ingrained culturally ingrained to us and of what's important you know a lot of these things are shaped by advertisements and that you need things and that you need them now same with seasons and things like that everything everything takes time you know a shower yeah that's my shower I always like to build things where I'm not necessarily trying to control everything it's like finding

a bunch of stuff dealing with what you have and being creative with it is really fascinating I think and has this inspired the GEOS ship at all this kind of living by living on the land is that help to for me it's it's like living in the way that we want to how we want to use you ship you know it's like how we're designing it and why we're designing it is to be able to make this possible for people yeah and that's the thing natural homes are exclusive like when I see straw bill or

like ham Creed home it's like beautiful but also totally insane of how much money it costs and how much time and effort it goes into this projects it's like so much manual labor to build these natural they're incredible and beautiful but take so much time so that's what we're trying to do is like putting all the qualities of a natural building into a product bringing new technology for the natural building industry to be able tub scale so it's like you get some place making and permaculture brought into how we build Villages and that really just

being like a new model for how communities are built in the future