ABSTRACT

We walked out of the bedroom onto the covered patio. Sam 1 directed my attention to a line that followed the bend in an arching gray wall. It marked the joint where the new straight exterior structure met with the original large dome. The line was a darker gray than the rest of the cement wall. Sam told me that transition points are always the hardest to blend. “He has a technique he has to use to build transitions and blend these two worlds together. We try to preserve the history as much as we can, but we need to expand and grow,” added his wife, Nancy (personal communication, January 29, 2013). Sam had developed a blending technique through years of work on the dome houses. Balancing history and growth through perpetual social, environmental, technological, and political change has been central to the DIY ethos of the community of makers at Whitehawk (see Figure 43.1), who are unified through a collective force entangled with the materiality of their homes and their relationship with nature and each other over the last forty years.