ARCHIMEDE NO-WASTE APPROACH

From the start we chose the rhomboid geometry that is made up of identical parallelograms. Just like with squares and rectangles, parallelograms can be made up of rectangular sheathing without wasting any of it.
Here is a demonstration: typically, our standard roof panels can be made up of two 4x8 sheets with no waste, one being cut diagonally , as shown in diagram below. This represent the roof of one 180 ft2 hexagonal module.



This stronger 'vaulted' surface is made up of three planes, each one made up of of-the-shelf building materials. You need to love that since it also applies to walls and underside panels (in the case of stilt houses )

ECONOMICAL

As most of you have noted by now, the secret of our economical shelters resides in the repeatability provided to us by the geometries we use. In the RD's (rhombic dodecahedrons), all panels are parallelograms of the same size ( actually we use 2 sizes in our 'squashed' RD, one size for the walls and one size for both the roof and the underside panels). This allows for simple assembly jigs, a uniform press to inject all of these with urethane foam, uniform carrying carts, simplified loading of containers etc....
Moreover, since parallellograms can be made from rectangular building materials with no waste ( see this blog ), there is an added economy not present from regular construction where upwards of 20% of materials can end up in municipal dumps.
The other economies also derive from economy of scale. When hundreds of shelters are built using only a few identical parts, much less time is wasted in certification, inspection, training etc...Anf of course purchasing power is augmented to a great degree.

ELEVATED WITH A PURPOSE

Shown at trade shows where sometimes there is only one day to put it up, the basic Archimede houses attracted crowds of up to 75,000 people in one weekend thorughout the early 80's. No one appeared to be surprised when it was hailed as 'Tomorrow's House', even though the actual purposes of sitting it high were:

• To profit from small lots by parking the auto below it
• To better resist floods and earthquakes
  
• to create a higher space that would leave cold air below, along with boots, skis and snow covered clothing.
• for the added security from robbery where only one door needs to be protected
• And basically to profit from the views and the breezes afforded by elevated living.

It needs to be said that the speed of assembly reflects the speed of fabrication. Uniform repeatable parts allowed Archimede houses to be fully made 'from scratch'; all windows where of the same design and sizes, all were fixed with an insulated panel below for ventilation. And of course all panels were of the same size as explained elsewhere in this site.

DOMES AND ZOMES

Buckminster Fuller created domes while at the same time others like Steve Baert were developing 'zomes' a contraction of 'dome' and 'zonahedron', as a way to overcome the limitations set by the little domes that people where building left in right in the sixties. To the left a 3/4 dome built by an artist friend of mine, Jean-Louis Milette of Contrecoeur QC (shown standing on skis at the right ). Jean-Marie built it on a hillside in a way that his studio is one floor below, entirely exposed on the opposite side by having the dome close in below its equator, thus the name (3/4 dome). Most panels are slightly different in size although all are triangles. Which leads me to explain the difference between DOMES and ZOMES using Steve's simplification:
"Domes are a complicated way to achieve simple shapes, while zomes are simple ways to achieve complicated shapes'.
Indeed, in our zome style houses, only two sizes of panels made from the same molds achieve complicated resort complexes and housing that wouyld be impossible to combine as domes. However, we need to underline the fact that domes do give the maximum volume for the smallest outside envelope. They also provide the lowest wind drag of al structures.