Have you ever wanted your very own geodesic dome home? A bunch of my friends did. So we made one and took it to Shambhala, the world’s premiere electronic music festival. Here’s how it all went down:

The mathematicians in the group calculated the dimensions and materials required to build 5/8 of a full sphere using information from that wonderful source of almost unlimited information: the interwerbz. A whole bunch of ten foot lengths of steel tubing were procured, and work began.

Step 1: CUTTING

Using my dad’s circular saw and metal-cutting blades (we wore through 3 blades by the end), we produced over 150 poles, none more than 1/8″ off the desired length. In order to make precise cuts, we set up a simple guide system on our workbench (actually my dad’s wooden scaffolding, put to use as a workbench). After every tenth cut, we also did a measurement to ensure we were still getting the same length of pole. There were three different lengths required, so we colour-coded them with black, red, and gold spray paint before making the cuts.

Here, on the left, you can see how we butted the pole up against a board clamped to the workbench. On the right, blocks on either side of the pole holds it snugly in place and provide a surface for the circular saw to slide across:

Power tools are fun! Note safety goggles and gloves to protect against the tiny bits of hot flying metal (photo by Conrad Nickels).

How many UBC graduates does it take to cut a piece of steel tubing? Apparently seven: one to cut, one to hold, one to take photos, and four to eat pizza, drink beer, and supervise.

Sparks flying:

Step 2: CRUSHING

Using an arbor press with a four foot piece of metal electrical conduit slipped over the handle to increase leverage, the end of each piece of steel tubing was flattened. This step is clearly visible in the video below. The seam that runs lengthwise down the steel tubing (easy to see if you look inside) was always lined up at a 45 degree angle from the horizontal plane to avoid splitting or buckling the metal.

Step 3: DRILLING HOLES

Using a drill press (borrowed from the Vancouver Tool Library) mounted on our workbench, we carefully drilled a hole slightly larger than the diameter of the bolts we planned to use for assembling the dome. Before each and every single hole, cutting oil was added to the drill bit. Don’t skip this step! Here, John drills through a flattened section of steel tubing with the drill press:

Step 4: BENDING

For our geodesic dome to work, the flattened tip of each piece of steel tubing had to be bent to the correct angle, otherwise we’d end up with a big, flat set of interconnected metal triangles. To get the angle right, we bolted one of my dad’s vices to a board, then attached a lightweight piece of perforated board to the base and marked lines on it at the correct angle. Jeremy drinks beer while steel tubing bends itself to the correct angle:

Step 5: GRINDING

Once each piece of steel tubing had both ends crushed, drilled, and bent, we had to smooth out the sharp edges from the cutting and drilling that could otherwise be safety hazards. You can use sandpaper if you’re looking to lose weight, but we did the job with my angle grinder, as seen in the video below.

Step 6: PAINTING

As previously mentioned, we had three different lengths of steel tubing, marked with paint stripes during the cutting. Using three different colours of spray paint specifically designed to prevent rust, we coated the tips, where corrosion would be most likely to occur. Here, the colour-coded steel tubing surrounds my 1979 Honda CM400T to dry the paint in the hot summer sun:

To give you a better idea of steps 2 to 6, here’s a video showing each of these steps in order:

Bubble Dome: Preparing the steel tubing from Chris Anderson on Vimeo.

Step 7: CUT DOME COVER PANELS

A geodesic dome would be neat, but not particularly practical as a living space, without a cover to protect against the elements. Mark’s research led to the conclusion that Tyvek HomeWrap would be the best material with which to fashion a cover for the Bubble Dome. Two rolls of the stuff, bought at a secret mystery store, the identity of which shall never be revealed, could be cut into 9 panels to be sewn into a dome form.

These were BIG panels, so we needed a big and level working space to make them. Where else would a group of former UBC students go? The lobby of War Memorial Gym of course:

Shoes came off to protect the Tyvek, and we began marking out the cut lines as precisely as possible (the key to getting this right on the first try was having several math experts present). We left about 1″ of material outside of the marked lines, so that the panels could later be sewn together.

The bigger your scissors, the easier it is to cut Tyvek quickly and accurately along the lines. For some reason there’s a 10″ pair of scissors in my family’s house, and this is the first time I’ve found them useful instead of bizarrely oversized.

The internerds has a dome cover calculator, which you can find at domerama.com. Incredible.

One of the nine giant Tyvek panels we cut for our geodesic dome cover:

Step 8: PAINT DOME COVER

The two steps of this process in which I didn’t manage to participate were the painting and sewing of the dome cover. Matthew researched and tested various types of paint on the Tyvek to determine what we could use without negatively affecting the tear-resistant and waterproof properties of the material, then he and John painted all sorts of crazy colourful patterns onto the panels.

Step 9: SEW DOME COVER

Once the paint had dried, a group returned with the panels to the War Memorial Gym lobby at UBC with a sewing machine and many helping hands to guide the panels while our expert seamstresses sewed the panels together with heavy duty thread (photo by Conrad Nickels).

With all nine panels sewn together, they ‘inflated’ the dome cover to test it, and it worked! (Photo by Conrad Nickels)

Step 10: TEST

We did a quick, partial test build in Matthew’s front yard, pleasantly surprising a number of neighbours and passers-by, learned a number of things about dome assembly in doing so, checked that the Tyvek dome cover fit properly, and then dismantled the whole thing immediately.

Here’s a video showing the group pulling the cover onto the dome while I was lying on my back on the ground filming. You’ll notice at one point, someone jumps down without looking and lands on my recently-operated knee. Luckily I moved just in time, and his foot glanced off the side of my knee instead of crushing it.

Covering a geodesic dome with Tyvek from Chris Anderson on Vimeo.

Step 11: TRANSPORT

On August 8th, Conrad picked me up and we drove across town to pick up the Bubble Dome. We loaded the entire geodesic dome – steel tubing, Tyvek cover, bolts, nuts, and washers, turbine air vent, and tools – into Conrad’s car.

The drive from Vancouver to Shambhala (just outside the town of Salmo, BC) took us about nine hours. By the time we arrived, we had both become experts at spotting deer from a great distance and slowing down to avoid hitting them, despite their best efforts. We arrived a little after 2am and spent the next seven hours waiting, trying to sleep, and occasionally driving from one part of the vehicle staging grounds to the next. By 9am we were through the gates and after a fair bit of searching, we found our friends who had reserved a spot among the thousands of tents, large enough to fit the Bubble Dome.

Waiting to get in:

Step 12: BUILD A BUBBLE DOME

Once the dome materials were unloaded, we started assembling our geodesic dome, being careful to place each colour-coded piece of steel tubing in the right place (photo by Conrad Nickels).

Starting our geodesic dome assembly at Shambhala:

3/8 sphere complete – only one layer left to reach our 5/8 sphere completed Bubble Dome:

Alllllmost done! In total, it took us about three hours to assemble the Bubble Dome.

Bubble Dome structure completed! It proved to be extremely strong and able to safely support any number of us climbing and jumping all over it:

And then, for the Tyvek dome cover:

The final product, a Bubble Dome that was colourful on the inside, and white on the outside to reflect the intense sunlight, standing 16 feet high and 24 feet wide:

Daytime temperatures at Shambhala were in the high 30s every single day, roasting anyone who stayed out in the open sun or tried to hide in their tents, which acted like greenhouses. The weather inside our wonderful Bubble Dome, however, was perfectly comfortable! Many daytime naps were had.

I won’t say much about the festival itself. It’s a bit too hard to describe, so you’ll just have to go yourself if you want to understand it. But I will say that there were some amazing musicians and some very cool people at Shambhala, and I had a lot of fun. The stages, lighting, and sound quality were very impressive. This is the Living Room stage by the river:

The festival runs all night and most of the day, with six main stages. The Chill Dome was a small stage where about twenty of us enjoyed DJ Zero D playing a set of trance music, and then an impromptu set when he realised that the next act hadn’t shown up for their slot.

The best lighting of any stage, in my opinion, was at Pagoda. Projectors beamed creative animations onto the various surfaces of the stage to produce optical illusions, while some of the best lasers in the world sliced through the air, painting patterns on the mountainside in the distance.

In one of the photos above (right before the hammock naptime photo), you can see the Tigger totem. Many groups make totems which they take with them when they go dancing at Shambhala, partly to express team spirit and partly to make it easier for the members to find each other. Mike built the Tigger totem a couple years ago and has added more lights (and disco ball squares) over time. It stands about 12 feet high and has its own (very heavy) power source. While cumbersome, the Tigger totem could be seen from very, very far away. When you’re trying to find your friends at one of six stages with 10,000 people in attendance, Tigger becomes your best friend. One night I found a guy dressed as Tigger, so we got a photo of Tigger with Tigger:

The act I enjoyed the most, of the ones I saw, was Porter Robinson. The guy’s only 20 years old, and is a musical genius. Below is a random clip of a few seconds of his set at Pagoda, though this sample doesn’t do any justice to his skills; the video is intended to give you a glimpse of what it’s like to watch a set at Pagoda. To hear something more representative of his work, head over to: http://porterrobinsonofficial.com/

Porter Robinson and the Tigger Totem at Pagoda (Shambhala 2012) from Chris Anderson on Vimeo.

On the morning of August 13th, we disassembled the Bubble Dome, which only took about half an hour, packed up the cars, and headed for the exits. Lined up with thousands of other vehicles, it took us an hour and a half to get off the ranch. We then had a nice long drive back to Vancouver, and two days later I flew to Nova Scotia…