“Hey, Dome”

Okay, there’s one thing I’d like to share about what interests me on civil engineering. I had always been attracted to beautiful buildings. Well, I am an arts lover after all. If you stumble across buildings in Dubai, Hong Kong and few other places, I believe you’ll be astounded by the creative artistic designs the architects and civil engineers had came upon. Back in Malaysia, the designs of KLIA and KLCC are one of the most impressive ones.

Now, there is this one structure, though, that caught a great amount of my attention. I never realize this structure when someday I was busy with my Hyphen and Fairy job and get a hold of a very interesting fact. The Japan world stadiums, which held the integral structure of some ancient religious buildings, the dome. Tokyo Dome, Kyocera Dome, Tajima Dome, Seibu Dome, Nagoya Dome, Yokkaichi Dome, Sapporo Dome, Fukuoka Dome, Kitakyushu Media Dome, Seagaia Ocean Dome, Odate Jukai Dome, Atomic Bomb Dome. Oh trust me, you don’t want me to list them all. They were too much from world class stadiums to mere houses.

Kyocera Dome in Osaka - my favourite

Let’s skip Japanese domes, I realize there’s one dome I had always been to, and until now had never failed to bait me over and over again; the mosque. When I was a little child, this dome design had always absorbed me into the beautiful arts. And yes, when I said ‘absorbed’, I really mean it ‘absorbed’ my inner self into it. If you never tried once, I recommend you to sit in the mosque and stare at the inside of the dome. You’ll understand the peaceful feelings I had. I love the domes. When I knew how vast the usage of dome in Japan, I was curious. Why dome?

Domes are buildings with hemispherical design that have a circular, square or octagonal base. It is a structure that require less time and materials for construction compared to other structures. As far as circulation of air and energy was concerned, the interiors of these semi-spherical structures proved to be the best among all other structures. Domes are devoid of any hindrance internally and allow the atmosphere to be heated and cooled in a natural way.

Do you get it? In statistical language, domes take approximately 30% less energy for heating and cooling as the domes have close to 30% less surface area than other conventional or box shaped buildings. This structure allows wide variety of floor designs because it doesn’t need any interior support and gives the advantage of the wide open space of your building. Because of the structure’s tightness, they conserve vast amounts of energy, making them more cost effective. The air circulate by convection without being accumulated at the corners. In layman’s term, the amount of airflow going through the building is equal to having a door open all the time!

That’s one reason. Now, money-wise, building materials required for constructing a dome structure are fewer compared to those required by other conventional structures – thus it reduces cost for the builder. Domes consumes less time and don’t need any additional walls or columns no matter how big the dome is. This is one of the reason why Japan’s stadiums mainly built with domes. And the fact that the surface area is small, the influence of the weather conditions on the dome is negligible. That is why this structure is light in weight, yet very strong in structure.

The Tokyo Dome - World Stadium

Yes, domes are extremely durable and strong. Some engineers even described the strength of a dome as to withstand a nuclear blast or resist radiation. I have not yet, however, found any proof in this statement. What I can agree is how domes can resist adverse climatic conditions such as hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, fires, flood and other threatening natural disasters easily. This structure have a very long life with an expected existence spanning over a hundred years. Want a proof? Will you consider an extreme polar region climate structure of igloo as versatile and astounding?

Do you know when Hurricane Frances hit the coast of Florida, USA, a dome built right on the shore was one of the only buildings left standing? And need I remind you of the Tsunami incident in Acheh where the mosque is the only building that stood sturdy? Oh, don’t make me start on how fire-proof domes are. Firefighters even took refuge in a dome to escape a ravenous forest fire surrounding it. While average building life is measured in decades, domes can be measured in centuries.

miracles in tsunami in Acheh

Now the question is, are domes the only structure that have these advantages? If you search about stability and durability, there is indeed another structure that resembles domes. But there is one characteristic that identical to dome structures only. Basically, dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure based on a network of great circles lying on the surface of a sphere. These circles intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the entire structure. When completed to form a complete sphere, it projects endpoints on the dome’s surface. This will distribute and keep the energy flowing through the structure. And this ability is only available to dome structures. The flowing of energy was the reason why we feel like being absorbed into the structure whenever we stare upwards into the inner side of it.

With the fact of how domes distribute energy flows, let’s get back to the mosque and other domes I was referring earlier. If you can feel the serenity being in regular domes, can you imagine how domes on mosques give effect to us considering what we DO inside the mosque? Don’t tell me you didn’t know how praying in ‘jamaah’ reduces stress with the energy balances between people once the feet touched. And combining THAT with the miracles of domes, imagine how great it is to stay in the mosques!

I know, not all mosques are built in dome structures. Some even have simple square or rectangular structures but domes didn’t make those mosques any better than the others. It is just one more miracle we can say about why we feel so peaceful in the buildings called mosques. Don’t forget, what we do inside the mosques contribute great amount of the cause.

When I was in Malaysia, I once came across a shop with the dome structure. I used to think it was unique and it reminds me to the beautiful domes I’ve seen in Europe. But once I understood the benefits of dome itself, I think it won’t surprise me if I might just have a dome structure for my house someday. A small one would be okay. Hmm… *thinks hard*

Life Traveler,

Dalili