Tatooine in Star Wars It may not be real, but this dome house in Joshua Tree, California certainly brings the spirit of the fictional planet down to earth. Called Bonita Domes, the unique property recently hit the market for $1.3 million.
The home’s owner and builder, Lisa Starr, a holistic healer known as the medicine woman of the drum, began working on the site in 2014. “She was trained by CalEarth to build in the superadobe style, a form of Earthbag architecture developed by architect CalEarth founder Nader Khalili,” says Jeffrey Weiss, the home’s current owner. “She sold me the property during COVID in 2020.” While Starr has built several dome structures on the property, the main house spans two large social domes that each include two sleeping pods and a full bathroom. A kitchen and a breakfast room connect the two sides. Also on the two-acre lot is a pool, spa, meditation temple, outdoor kitchen, gazebo with barbecue and fire pit.
Appearing somewhat like soft mounds of earth, the unique architectural style involves stacking long adobe-filled fabric tubes on top of each other with barbed wire in between, which acts as mortar and holds the structure together. Because of its attention to local materials and little waste, superadobe architecture is celebrated as a sustainable and natural building technique. According to CalEarth, the method meets modern safety requirements and passes severe California earthquake code testing. “The construction process is intentionally simple, but the structural integrity of superadobe is the result of years of research,” reads the organization’s website.
