A Dome of Their Own: Twenty-Five Years in the Dreaming
The Bonea family’s dream home, a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, triple-dome home in North Carolina, is under construction.
Daniela and Ion Bonea began dreaming of a dome home when they lived in Ontario, Canada, back in 1999. They lived near Bill Lishman, a Canadian sculptor who became well known as Father Goose after using an ultralight to help geese migrate, and his home fascinated them. Self-designed and built into a hillside, Lishman’s house vibrated with originality and independence.
They connected with Monolithic in 2000 and came all the way from Ontario, Canada, for the Monolithic Institute’s Annual Dome Tour in 2002. Monolithic domes fascinated them—the Eye of the Storm on Sullivan’s Island, in South Carolina; Cloud Hidden, in Asheville, North Carolina—and they vowed that someday, they would have their own dome home.
“We have lived in a box for so many years,” Daniela Bonea said. “Why not live outside the box?”
“Yes,” Ion agreed with a smile. “I have built so many boxes while dreaming of this house.”
Ion Bonea flips the switch to turn on the inflator fan—a big moment for every dome owner. It only takes about ten minutes for a new dome home to take shape.
Every few months, Ion would redesign the plans for the house that had captured their imagination. For twenty years, he has been planning, dreaming and reading every issue of every publication produced by the Monolithic Dome Institute. In September 2023, their dream sprang to vibrant life.
“We knew it had to be a Monolithic Dome,” Ion Bonea said. “We come from Romania, where many houses are built from stone. Grandparents give their houses to their parents, who, in turn, give them to their children as they grow.
“Here, there is a tendency to build a house to last for a single generation. I don’t know how long I will live, but I know that the house we build here will be here for my child, for my child’s children, for many generations. We aren’t building only for ourselves, but for the future, so we need a home that will last.”
The Boneas have lived in beautiful houses. Each of their homes has benefited from Ion’s distinctive touch, honed over a lifetime of renovation and construction.
“I build what I like, so I can see something at the end of the day,” Ion said. “It can be hard work. When my daughter was about 12, she worked with me a bit, helped me out, held stuff, and soon she told her mom, ‘I don’t want to work like my dad. I want to study.’”
They are moving from a 6,500-square-foot home with 50 windows into a three-dome home on a hill. In their new abode, the center dome stands 18 feet tall and has a 36-foot diameter, flanked on each side by domes 15 feet tall with 34-foot diameters. Neither of them has experienced even a moment of missing that larger place.
[Left] After the Airform is inflated, construction of the Monolithic Dome home begins in earnest inside. [Right] An airlock ensures that the pressurized air inside the Airform does not change as people enter and exit the dome.
“When our daughter went to college, it was just the two of us, sitting in that big house with our cat,” Daniela said. “We had a full basement for that cat. We simply didn’t need or use all that space. It could be a month before I walked up to the third floor of our house. It took too much from us. When we came home from work, we couldn’t enjoy it.”
Daniela had a meaningful job as a general practitioner, and Ion’s construction projects in Hendersonville were thriving. Nonetheless, they began to look in earnest for land with the zoning and features that appealed to their aesthetic sensibility.
“We looked everywhere for the right land,” Daniela said. “We needed three to five acres of land, a creek, and a hill.”
Ion agreed, adding that they needed the best place to build their dome, wide open spaces, and storage space for his equipment and tools. Many years before, Daniela had driven through Fairview Valley, and she recalled its beauty—but she wasn’t expecting the flood of feeling that filled her heart when she went to view property there.
“We knew when we stepped foot on this land that we would build our home here,” Daniela said. “I am not one to cry, but when I walked up the hill here, tears were just running down my face. God knew where we belonged. He was telling us something. We couldn’t afford it, not really, but we made an offer, and by a miracle, it was accepted.”
The mountain views reminded the Boneas of the mountains in Romania. The land included a house, a barn, and a small spring where they could make a pond.
“Everything came together,” Ion said. “We found what we were looking for.”
[Left] Javier Figueroa and Ion Bonea double-check the rebar spacing, prepping for shotcrete. [Right] Ion and Javier pose for a portrait while having way too much fun the day before shotcrete application begins.
Only after the deal had closed did the Boneas learn that the lady who had lived there, Phyllis Lytle, was a member of their own church. Phyllis and Daniela both love to garden, love flowers, and they even volunteer at the same place: the Manna Food Bank. The acreage purchased by Daniela and Ion had been in the same family for several generations.
“She had prayed for somebody to find this place, somebody who would embrace this land the way she did,” Daniela said. “And we do.”
Daniela and her mother-in-law have been gardening, and they keep exquisite care of the flower beds. The Boneas hired Monolithic to conduct a feasibility study in November 2022, and they ultimately chose a customized combination of the Hyperion and Triton-style domes. They chose to install radiant floor heating and opted to have their doorways cut in, not out, to respect the smooth lines of the exterior.
“We’re already so happy,” Daniela said. “When it came time for it (the airform) to inflate, neighbors watched with their kids. It took less than ten minutes, and it raised up like a fortress.”
Daniela and Ion could have lived anywhere, in any style of house they chose. Ion has renovated many houses to a superb standard. Ion said that Monolithic Domes are built differently, more simply and sustainably, in a way that’s better not only for the immediate environment, but also for the future of the earth.
“There’s so much waste in building most homes, with shingles and wood, but with this one, there’s no waste,” Ion said. “It’s very clean and environmentally friendly, and it’s indestructible.”
From the first moment that they could step inside the dome, even before the shotcrete had been applied to the walls, they felt a renewed sense of peace when they entered the airform with its interlocking rebar.
Daniela Bonea celebrates inside the Airform of her much-anticipated Monolithic Dome dream home.
“It feels like the place is hugging you when you walk inside it,” Daniela said. “It has a celestial majesty when you go in there. I have never felt like that in any box homes.” Daniela said that she felt the dome could protect them through all the storms of life.
“In storms, windows rattle, and gutters shake,” Daniela said. “In a dome home, there’s no gutter to shudder as the winds blow. It won’t be noisy during storms. Domes stay peaceful.”
After more than twenty years of designing, planning, and dreaming, Daniela and Ion have finalized the plans, laid the foundation, and constructed their forever home. One week before completion, they celebrated for a moment with expert builder Javier Figueroa and his wife, Blanca, enjoying Russian cookies and sparkling water.
“This will be it,” Daniela said. “I’m not going to move from here unless it’s to the grave. It is a relief to find this place at last. Life has become a dream for us.”
Although they now have the home of their dreams, Ion continues to plan for the next adventure. He’s thinking of a small dome guesthouse.
“Next, we will build a dome into the hill,” Ion said. “I want to cut grass on top of my house.”
Seen from a distance, the Monolithic Dome Home sits amoungst the trees in the Fairview Valley.