Building the Zome Dome Art Piece For An Event

I’ve built a few zomes while doing art volunteering for festivals, and they were smaller than the one shown in the image above which is a “zonotopia” a large scale original zome by artist Rob Bell. While, this piece is exciting to look at and interact with building one of these after 10 seasons of wood warping created substantial difficulties in quick assembly and strike for all the volunteers involved in the build.

the Zome dope featured in the front center is the size zome and possibly the exact zome that I helped build for the priceless festival over the last three or four years. Helping the Rb team build this zome really gave me a sense of awe for how are durable and reusable art can be when it’s built correctly and has the right storage and assembly instructions.

Zomes come in lots of shapes and sizes, and they really are meant to be roofed in the real world. In the artistic world, however, they generally represent more of a metaphorical barrier between the inside and the outside that a physical barrier from any elements.

Taking a closer look at the structure of every zome you will realize that each panel is made of a parallelogram made up of two invisible triangles creating the required angles.

The zoom dome requires more unique pieces than a regular dome you see made out of two repeating shapes interchanging to creat the structure which is what gives it the mystical effect they can see in the Burning Man photos above.

Here are some more pictures of what a roof zoom could look like if it was in a real world environment. There are many examples of these sorts of zones, and they serve every purpose for a residential to Saunas.

Ultimately zomes can make really beautiful structures regardless of their purpose is just for art, or if function follows form for the construction. There is some epic examples of zones that are built for greenhouse purposes as well.