Bamboo Geodesic Dome

This intructable shows how to make a simple and low cost geodesic dome shelter out of recycled materials and bamboo.

What you need is 26 4ft bamboo sticks and about 120ft of nylon rope.

The structure of this geodesic domes is shown in the photo below:

Bamboo sticks are almost natural tubes, except for the fact that there are thin ridge barriers every 6 inches.
Poke out these barriers with a long metal rod.

String the nylon rope into the bamboo tubes with the help of a long metal rod. (Tape the string to the end of the metal rod.)

Constructing the structure is fairly straightforward. Follow the diagram and wrap the rope and bamboo sticks around each other. The structure will stay up by friction and tension. The structure is inherently pretty strong.

For the covering, we used old vinyl material for the outside and lined it on the inside with old clothing.

We cut 25 4.5ft x4.5ft x4.5ft triangles from old vinyl. Then we cut up and pieced together 25 4ft x4ft x4ft triangles from old clothing. We sewed each cloth triangle to the vinyl one, and then sewed the vinyl triangles together, creating the covering.
We also made a vinyl 4ft-side pentagon and clothe 4ft-side pentagon for the floor.

The floor attaches to the outer covering by zippers. One of the bottom ring triangles is a door, and opens also by zipper.

Over all, it is a lot of sewing.

When the structure is complete and set up, it is quite neat. looking like a space camp on the outside, but a colorful, cozy space inside.

We also sewed a 4ft by 4ft bag.
When the structure is taken down, everything can fit into this bag.

So this bamboo geodesic dome is quite portable.