A Bird's Eye View of Change
by
David B. South, Jr.
reprinted from The Monolithic Dome Roundup Spring 2000
Nearly ten years ago, we packed up the company, said goodbye to our short-lived home in California and headed to Texas. We had to cram our staff into a converted three bedroom home until we could build the new office. Near the end of 1990 I went to Des Moines, Iowa, where I met Jack Boyt and spent time learning the Airform business, and later, helping move it to Texas, too.
By 1995, we finished our new manufacturing plant, Bruco: The Texas Italian Caterpillar; started the annual Monolithic Dome Builders Conference; and headed into our second year of Monolithic Dome Workshops. While in 1996, my dad moved into his dome home, "Charca Casa," and my wife and I moved to Italy, Texas, after I finally graduated from Utah State University.
In 1997, I took over the job as editor for the Roundup: Journal of The Monolithic Dome Institute, and we converted it from a sixteen page, black and white tabloid newsletter into a full-color magazine.
On May 8, 1997, the US Geological Survey took an aerial photograph of the Monolithic Dome Institute. Of course, we didn't know it at the time; it's not like you can see who is taking pictures of you from miles up in the air. But you can now find those photos online at Microsoft's Terraserver Project at http://terraserver.microsoft.com.
Check it out, you may be able to find your home. (It's tougher than it sounds; houses are very small.) In the photo you can clearly see the long, seven hump Bruco manufacturing plant.
It is remarkable how large that building is. Yet, from the ground, it seems much smaller.
You can also see my house, the Oberon, directly south of Bruco. The office is the small, three-lobed structure southeast of the Oberon. And Charca Casa, which literally means the House by The Pond, sits on the northwest shore of the small pond we created back in 1990.
What strikes me the most about this photo is how much is missing from it. Since it was taken many more domes have been built including two new houses, several storage buildings, the Monolithic manufacturing plant, and˙- finally - our new office.
With the growth of the dome business our own business needs grew, too. And we were running out of space. So we constructed a three dome complex on the land between the old office and Charca Casa. This time, however, we are planning for the future. Although we started with only three domes, we can add as many as ten if the need arises. In December, we finally moved in and what a difference it has made. I didn't realize how packed we had become.
We converted the old office into our new Monolithic Training Center where we will host the Monolithic Dome Workshops and other seminars.
As for the future, our small property is like a mirror of the dome business in general. It's growing, and we didn't know exactly how it would turn out when we started, but I personally like where it is going. ¬
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