Photogamer: Feb 2, 2008 “Toy”


Image by shannonpatrick17
Challenge: Toy
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Here is a link to my photo set of this structure I built today
http://flickr.com/photos/shannonpatrick17/sets/72157603838133996/

Learn more from the wikipedia entry Zome.
The term zome is used in several related senses. A zome in the original sense is a building using unusual geometries [1] (different from the standard house or other building which is essentially one or a series of rectangular boxes). The word "zome" was coined in 1968 by Steve Durkee, now known as Nooruddeen Durkee, combining the words "dome" and "zonahedron." On of the earliest models ended up as a large climbing structure at the Lama Foundation. In the second sense as a learning tool or toy, "Zometool" refers to a model-construction toy manufactured by Zometool, Inc.. It is sometimes thought of as the ultimate form of the "ball and stick" construction toy, in form. It appeals to adults as well as children, and is educational on many levels (not the least, geometry). Finally, the term "Zome system" refers to the mathematics underlying the physical construction system.

Both the building and the learning tool are the brain children of inventor/designer Steve Baer, his wife, Holly, and others. Baer was educated at Amherst College, UCLA, and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Zurich, Switzerland), where he studied mathematics. Here he became interested in the possibilities of building innovative structures using polyhedra (polyhedrons) other than rectangular ones. Baer and his wife, Holly, moved back to the U.S., settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the early 1960s. In New Mexico, he experimented with constructing buildings of unusual geometries (calling them "zomes", see "Drop City"), intended to be appropriate to their environment, notably to utilize solar energy well. Baer was fascinated with the dome geometry introduced by architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Baer was an occasional guest at Drop City, an arts and experimental community near Trinidad, CO. He wanted to make buildings that didn’t suffer from some of the limitations of the smaller, owner-built versions of geodesic domes (of the ‘pure Fuller’ design).

In recent years, the unconventional "zome" building-design approach with its multi-faceted geometric lines has been taken up by French builders in the Pyrenees. A recent book, Home Work, published in 2004 and edited by Lloyd Kahn, has a section featuring these buildings. While many zomes built in the last couple decades have been wood-framed and made use of wood sheathing, much of what Baer himself originally designed and constructed involved metal framing with a sheet-metal outer skin.

Buy a Zome Tool kit here: http://www.zometool.com/
and build wicked cool stuff like this:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/ART/BRIDGES2001/zome.html

Or try before you buy:
open-source modeling program for Zome:
ZomeCAD is an interactive 3D modeling program that enables you to create and view Zome System® models on a computer.
http://www.zomecad.org/

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