The New Monolithic Dome Institute
The monolithicdome.com website in 1998 with fashionable feathered photographs and a hit counter!
Welcome to the new Monolithic Dome Institute. It is more than a new website; it’s a new company, a new look, and an expanded mission to advance the construction of the Monolithic Dome and curved architecture.
MDI began as a division of Monolithic in September 1996. At the time, there were many storage domes along with an assortment of houses and other architectural buildings. However, the Monolithic Dome was still a secret. Most people had never heard of it.
The Institute’s mission was to teach and train people about the benefits and construction of the Monolithic Dome. We gave away the technology, offered classes, wrote books, started a quarterly magazine, and published our first website at monolithicdome.com. We encouraged more media coverage and placed articles in many major magazines and newspapers. Of course, we had a lot of help from dome owners and enthusiasts who championed the Monolithic Dome. We couldn’t have done it without them.
The Institute dramatically increased awareness of Monolithic Domes, and our website traffic grew from a few hundred visitors to tens of thousands a month. Last year we served over two million pages to over a half million visitors.
As the website grew in importance and size, we moved domains twice—eventually landing on monolithic.org—and content slowly became a mix of Institute information and Monolithic sales.
It’s time to separate Monolithic Constructors and the Monolithic Dome Institute. As of January 1, 2020, the Institute is a separate company—an educational organization—with the same mission to teach people about the Monolithic Dome. Monolithic is the primary sponsor of the new Institute, but separating the companies will allow other companies to sponsor and participate in the Institute as well.
Coming home
We are bringing the website back to the original domain—monolithicdome.com. It’s good to be home. This site is an entirely new system built from the ground up to support the Institute’s mission. It works well on phones, tablets, and desktop computers. And it’s fast—blazing fast!
We will carefully migrate relevant content from monolithic.org to this new domain. We will link back to the old site for as long as it is necessary. There is a lot of history there, and we don’t want to lose it.
Website designs over the years from the 2000s, 2010s, and now 2020.
New features
A new website is an opportunity to create something better. Back in 1996, we could count the number of Monolithic Dome schools on just one hand. Today, we don’t even know how many there are. So the first website feature is a library of Monolithic Dome projects.
Each project page identifies a single facility with a dome or multiple domes, its location, a map, pictures, pricing, plus the participants who helped create the facility. Related news and articles are also included. Essentially, a project page is everything we know about a particular dome. We’ve seeded the library with a few old and new domes, but it’s only the beginning.
We’ve also added a directory of companies and people connected to the dome industry. It’s a bit sparse right now, but that’ll change.
The news section will receive more updates, and we are improving the website every day.
Finally, we will add a support and reference section. There are many dome related topics that need up-to-date content that is consistently maintained.
Think of the new monolithicdome.com as a domepedia.
It’s a big project, and we need your help. Contact us with your ideas and suggestions.