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Fifty Years of Architecture
Citizens cast votes for East Tennessee's most notable architecture

Dome-iciles

Adaptable Knox
How some of our best-known buildings came into "reuse"

Those compelling geodesic "Fuller" structures

by Cassie J. Moore

They're gonna tear down Epcot Center. That's the first thing that passed through my mind as I spoke to James Daly, general manager of the Harry Lane Kia superstore on Alcoa Highway, inside one of very few geodesic domes in East Tennessee.

In 1984, when I was a just a little kid riding with mom to pick up relatives from McGhee Tyson Airport, I would fool myself into thinking that the Alcoa dome was Epcot. I had seen Epcot Center on TV and it looked like this place. White and big and round. Different.

The dome at 4612 Alcoa Highway was built in 1980, by Darris Allison, who ran a retail marine company there until 1984. He used the design of the geodesic dome, invented in the 1940's by 20th century renaissance man R. Buckminster Fuller. You've probably heard the cost and energy-friendly reasons for dome housing—a dome has less surface area than a square house, and thus requires less building materials. Additionally, exposure to cold and hot temperatures is decreased because there is the less surface area per unit of volume per structure. And domes are stubborn, sturdy buggers. One dome home in Port Arthur, Tex., has survived three hurricanes without a scratch.

Earthquakes, too, pose little threat. Plus, they're just so cool-looking. Like the kind of place a very intelligent and benevolent race of aliens would build if they ever came to visit. But the highly visible Alcoa Highway structure is slated to be torn down before Christmas. Like the impertinent five-year-old I was in 1984, I ask Daly why, my voice creeping into a whine.

"Because it's an absolutely awful place," Daly says. "It's just a black blob. It's not conducive to people stopping by...it looks ugly." Well, the dome is kind of ugly, now that it resembles a massive black hole sucking in little imported cars.

Daly says the folks at Kia covered the dome with black coating when they moved in, ostensibly because it was so dirty on the outside. I am sad to see it go, but that's business, and I'll just have to get over it. Besides, there are a few other, hidden and well-loved geodesic domes in the East Tennessee/Western North Carolina area, and they're not going anywhere.

Domes as a Mission

Atop 125 acres on Onion Mountain in Macon County, North Carolina, sit two perfect orbs. They jut out proudly from the brown and green organic shapes of the surrounding forest. They are adjoining, but individually spectacular. They are like two giant eyeballs with a wild 360-degree view: Over here, the Blue Ridge Mountains, over there Cullowhee. On a clear day, they spy South Carolina, and just over there is Tennessee. One is bright purple and 40 feet in diameter, the other canary yellow, with a 45-foot diameter. Their candy-colored curves inspire surprise, and you get the feeling they could roll right down the mountain with a swift kick.

Builder and owner Gyora Novak sits a table inside the purple dome, in a purple T-shirt. This morning he drove for 35 minutes up the mountain in his purple Toyota Forerunner, traveling over pavement, then gravel, then red mud and a couple of small creeks, to share and show off the domes in which he has invested the last six years of his life. He is 70.

Born in Israel, he has traveled the world. But this is home. "I came to the mountains here, by chance. I fell in love, and within a couple of days started packing. I knew this was it. It is strange to look for your true home all your life and never find it, and all of the sudden at age 65, bang! It fell on me," he says, his diction coated in lifetimes of languages, his hypnotic blue eyes as bright as a teenager's.

Novak has studied the geodesic dome structure since 1962, when he first came to the United States. He had built domes in Florida before coming to North Carolina, and says domes give him unparalleled peace.

"I have never lived and probably never will live in a place that gives me such an amazing feeling. The feeling straddles all the way from a pure spiritual, kind of dreamy sense of being, to something that is energizing," he says. "When you think about the great spiritual places in the world, from the Washington D.C. Capitol building, to the Vatican, to the entire Middle East, the structure of the mosques, synagogues, Buddhist temples—all of them have a dome at the top, because the dome is a spiritual structure. That's not debatable." He gestures outside, to the views just over his shoulder. "It is far more to be in a dome," he says. "And the dome permits this in-and-out life. Don't you sense the air, the smell, the temperature, the moisture between the trees?"

But for all Novak's excitement, he is disappointed in his mountain home. Inside the yellow dome are the building materials to create five more domes. He had intended to make a dome community in the mountains, open to whoever wanted to come and live. He would assist them in any business venture, as long as the plan would not disturb others. He had ideas to build a small inn, or a water-bottling company. He envisioned a community of artists, poets, and craftsmen growing their own food and living together.

He built it. He advertised it. He lectured about it at the local Rotary club. But the people never came. It's hard not to be disappointed along with him. Up here, the air is clean and still. You feel you could really get your head together. And although Novak isn't giving up his personal domes, he is somewhat resigned to the fact that his dome community will never exist. He blames this on people's unwillingness to consider the unique sphere as a home.

"People are so stuck on square houses that they could never accommodate with an open imagination what is good about this," he says. "No matter how fantastic this structure is, and could be built for a fraction of the cost (of a regular home), and can stand any kind of hurricane, any kind of damage, all the rest of the benefits possible—people don't adapt."

Allison, the Louisville, Tenn., boatmaker who built a few other domes in the energy-conscious period of the late '70s and early '80s, says "People told me they didn't want to live in an igloo. I heard it over and over." Besides the one on Alcoa Highway, three of Allison's domes are still standing in Chattanooga. One was erected for a church, and the others were on commercial sites.

Despite evidence to the contrary, domes are not a dying dream. According to one jolly guy in Cosby, Tenn., they're still the wave of the future.

Domes as Dreams

"You know, Buckminster Fuller—he said that it takes three years for an innovation in electronics to get to the market. It takes 10 years for an innovation in the automobile industry to get to market. And for housing, it takes 50 years for an innovation to get to market. And he invented (the dome) about 50 years ago," says Bill McGlamery, sitting on his porch in his overalls and green T-shirt. Behind him is the first of many domes he's built.

McGlamery, 73, is an independent contractor who builds American Ingenuity dome homes around the country. American Ingenuity sells dome-building kits on-line, and McGlamery will come and assemble the kit for around $200 per day. He says he builds three or four domes a year. His latest project in Vermont is a huge, multi-level commercial dome.

McGlamery started building domes in 1991, and says he is "kind of kooky" in his enthusiasm for them. "I'm what you'd call a true believer. I really believe that this is the housing of the future," he says, leading me around his dome. He has outfitted the two-story, 3,000 square-foot home with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, and a cozy loft. He takes pleasure in the little touches he's added to the place.

"Right here's the heating system," he says, ducking into a small utility room on the first floor. "That little pump pumps hot water from the water heater through the floor. That's radiant floor heat. The floor is the source of heat and it gets about 72 or 74 degrees, so it's that way all the time. People love it." He's also added a "vacuum garage," a laundry chute connecting the bathroom and utility room, and a spiral staircase.

He is building another, larger dome next door to this dome, which he rents out for $600 a month. He and his wife live in Morristown, where she runs a health-food store. He owns four acres of land in Cosby, and plans to build more domes there.

McGlamery is ambitious, loves to travel America building these things, and seems to have plenty of energy and ideas. I find it kind of strange that both he and Novak are so active and so clear-headed at an age when a lot of folks are slowing down. They are both such "true believers," evangelizing and sharing their knowledge about domes to anyone who is interested.

Domes as religion? It's a strange hypothesis. But that's the kind of thinking that these places inspire. Domes are havens for people who think...differently. And nowhere is this more obvious than on East Raccoon Valley Road in Knox County.

Domes as Mystery

Approaching the Raccoon Valley dome, you pass a lot of intriguing junk. To your left, along the gravelly and lengthy driveway, there's a big, dark blue, old-school Lincoln Continental submerged in grass and weeds. On your right, nearer to the house, is a kid's plastic jungle gym, also submerged in weeds. Clothes of different colors hang on an outside line. There are chairs spread all around outside. There's a bathtub outside, too. There's a three-foot statue of some saint leaned up against the porch, with what looks like Mardi Gras beads around its neck.

The woman who lives here is already a legend in my mind. The women at the nearby BP station knew exactly who I was looking for when I mentioned my dome quest. "The round house? That woman is always in here. She'd probably love to show it off, she's always inviting us over there," said one cashier, gesturing to her gossiping posse behind her. "She just came in and got a beer, so she might be home, but I don't know," said another cashier.

I've got this vision in my head of an older woman who drinks beer in the afternoon and hangs her clothes out to dry. A woman who drove her old car into the grass one day and just said, "Screw it. I'm leaving it here." A woman who gets naked and takes her baths outside. A woman who once had kids to keep her company but now socializes with her BP buddies. Her dome home is more cylindrical than spherical. It looks like a 12-foot-high outdoor pool with a gigantic bowl on top of it. It appears to be a 3/8 dome, which means the convex part on top—the "bowl"—is only 3/8 of a full sphere. I am a little scared to ring the doorbell, afraid of how the woman might look or act. But no one is home so I leave her a note. She never gets back to me.

There are other domes I didn't get to see. One is in Seymour, the other in South Knoxville. The funny thing about domes is once I find out about one, inevitably I'm tipped off to another. And another. And another. Domers seem to have some connection to each other because of their unique dwellings.

Domes are rare in these parts, but they definitely have a presence. When the big, black dome is destroyed, it will be the end of curious glances and whimsical ponderings on Alcoa Highway. It'll be just another car lot. But the other domes are safe, tucked away in hills and gravel, open—but ignored—secrets.