The Trekr Dodeca Shelter© is a design for a dome structure that is strong, poses less wind resistance to a comparable flat-sided structure, and can be easily transported and erected. It is similar in design to a geodesic dome or a low-order tessellated sphere, but it is a much superior structure as it is more practical to build.

The design is based on a geometric solid known as a dodecahedron. This is a solid composed of 12 pentagon faces. To obtain more of dome shape I used each side of a pentagon as the base of a triangle. By doing this I obtain a dome shape that is composed entirely of equilateral triangles—all with the same dimensions and bilateral symmetry in all their angles!
I envision the design as a twenty-first century Yurt style tent, a greenhouse, a military command post, or an all-temperature shelter. Like an igloo, the interlocking triangles act as bricks do in a dome.

As this triangle-based dome approaches a sphere in shape, it lends itself to building structures on land, water, or even on the moon. While the design lends itself to either scaling-up, or scaling-down in size for numerous other structures and applications, the illustrated design’s size is based on obtaining triangles from readily available 4-foot wide materials. The illustrated structure measures 10.5 ft. in height, and 12 ft. in circumference.

The individual triangle bricks of the shelter are made from double-wall foam-core materials in order to achieve maximum insulation and the greatest strength-to-weight ratio. In a military shelter application, the faces can be made of Kevlar reinforced composite panels, with a Rhino-hide encased foam-core center or other such materials. In civilian emergency shelters, the outer skins can be made out of fiberglass or vinyl with an inter core of insulated panels commonly used in construction. In greenhouses, the triangles are made from clear multi-wall polycarbonate panels (the triple-wall version would be the best!) readily available on the market.