Former Contractor Uses Materials From the Soil, ‘Geltaftan’ Technique to Build His Own Ceramic Dome Home : Feat of Clay

It’s shortly after dawn in rural eastern San Diego County. Awakened by pink streaks of sunrise, former home builder Joseph Diliberti rises from the mattress on the floor of his ceramic dome house to begin another day.

He meditates, draws well water, showers from a bucket and goes out to tend his garden. On other such mornings, he might ride his bike, fish, swim or read.

What he doesn’t have to do is wake to an alarm clock, balance a checkbook, wait in line to fill a gas tank, pay an electric bill, fight rush-hour traffic or endure the other daily burdens of modern civilization.

Most of what he eats, he grows or gathers. He uses candles for light. A stone pit behind his house serves as the stove.

His dome house, 20 feet in diameter and 20 feet high, is made of fired clay, straw and water; it is the color of a red clay garden pot. On the warmest days, its inner walls feel cool. A breeze passes freely through the dome, directed by a series of “wind chimneys.”

In the winter, a small fireplace heats the dwelling so the walls exude their own warmth. The waterproof dome offers its owner all he seeks--cover, safety, quiet and a cocoon-like environment conducive to personal metamorphosis.

With his dangling dreadlocks, simple manner of dress and unadorned lifestyle, Joseph (he discards last names) no longer relates to the successful Bronx-born home builder he was just over a decade ago.

Now, the building materials that fascinate him are straw, water, silica-borax glaze and the clay beneath his feet.

“Being a builder and a contractor, I got a firsthand shot at experiencing to the fullest the way ‘they’ construct things ‘out there,’ ” he said. “And being a traveled man, I knew there were other ways. So I was able to make a comparison.”

Joseph, 42, who served in Vietnam as a Marine, said there he witnessed the annihilation of whole environments in the name of America’s way of life. Coming home to construction didn’t feel a lot different.

“It did not feel like construction to me,” he said. “It felt like destruction. . . . After destroying a few environments here, I could not get over feeling very, very badly about it,” he said, gazing at the neatly swept dirt floor of his igloo.

“And I realized that in the end you get a box that owns you. Isn’t it a joke that we as sophisticated, thinking human beings have to spend 30 years of our lives to put a roof over our heads? No, it didn’t make any sense. So I tossed it all up in the air to search for another way.”

His search took him around the world, through scores of books and inside himself. It took 10 years for him to find a way to build in harmony with nature. The answer was beneath his feet.

Clay--indigenous red clay, straw and water--kneaded together in a hole by Joseph’s feet and fashioned into bricks by his hands. Using only a bucket, scaffold board and wooden mold, he made each brick and laid them in place one at a time to build the dome home.

Then Joseph and friends fired the entire structure for 36 hours by building a huge bonfire inside the dome. The flames grew so hot they melted a stout bottle placed inside as a heat test. Steam rose from the clay, sealing the bricks and the glaze coating.

When the firing was done, he had created what he terms a storm-proof, earthquake-proof, fire-proof, low-maintenance, earth-friendly housing model for the future.

The house contains no internal posts because each handmade brick is edged slightly to lie snugly against the weight of the one below it. Small round glass windows--recycled bottles and chunks of broken glass--were added last.

He hopes now to be able to enlighten the world with clay technology, which is far more to Joseph than a manner of building. It is a manner of thinking, and relating to the earth.

“I actually saw the light in the Yucatan, when I was admiring the simplicity of the peoples’ lives. And the genuine smiles that I came across, the genuine happiness and reality of life. When I came back to America, I came to this land I now own and started finding my way in a simple manner.”

He first built a camper shell on his truck out of scrap wood about 10 years ago. “I realized there was so much scrap wood, you could build a city out of the waste of America,” he said.

Collecting more scrap wood from construction sites, he built a simple cabin on his land in rural east San Diego County. He built it without electrical tools to experience construction in a traditional way. The cabin took two years to complete.

He lived in the one-room dwelling, with its sleeping loft, fireplace and cooking stove, for about two years. As he has ever since, he drew water from the well to bathe and cook, and lit his home with candle power. An outhouse treated with ash served as the bathroom.

“Then a visiting friend gave me an idea for a tree house in the large oak near the cabin,” he said. “I climbed the tree barefoot and started building. . . .”

Two years later, he moved into his tree house, built on springs so it wouldn’t harm the oak. It, too, was constructed of recycled wood. He drew water up with a pulley system.

Joseph’s next inspiration was a five-story pagoda with a recycled glass roof. He drew the plans on a brown paper bag. It, too, took two years to build. It, too, was made from scrap wood. But this time, for the first time, he built a structure that was round.

Instantly, Joseph said, he felt a strong sense of peace in a round dwelling--round like the womb, round like the earth. He realized that living in a round dwelling imparted a sense of inner security and outer oneness with the universe.

But the more he read about the impact of modern lumber and energy needs on the planet, the more he wanted to find an alternative to wood construction,

“Throughout this whole time,” he recalled, “I knew of a man named Nader Khalili, an Iranian-born Los Angeles-based architect, and I read his books “Racing Alone” and “Ceramic Houses and How To Build Them” and I found my answer. (See accompanying story.) Then, during a rainy day, I discovered I had clay on my land.”

Joseph began experimenting with a few scale models, then built a few forms, “and before you know it, I was up to my knees in clay. For two solid years. With wind, earth, fire and water, plus $20 for glazing, I built a house, a nice one.

“So it’s obvious that there’s really no reason why we have to spend $250,000 or more to put a roof over our heads and become, in effect, victims and slaves to a greedy monetary system.

“I believe the only reason people do is because they have no idea there are alternative ways. And none are offered them in this country. I believe if the government would support alternative housing, there would be more. And we could end homelessness.”

Admittedly, Joseph’s point of view and style of life are not always well-received. A decade ago, when he built his first cabin, his neighbors were mostly birds and trees and raccoons, which came bumming bits of banana and peanuts.

Now, his neighborhood has been suburbanized with massive estate homes. The stream that used to flow near his cabin has been diverted by construction up hill. The raccoons are mostly gone, driven away by other people’s pet dogs and cats, lack of water and loss of native foods.

During a recent brush-fire that scorched hundreds of acres of land and brush, including Joseph’s tree house, some of the neighbors were quick to point fingers at him. Although fire officials say they never considered him a suspect, Joseph felt the heat of false accusations.

“I got a little bit of harassment after the fire because of the way I live, because I live by fire,” he recalled with controlled irritation. “(But) I understand the power of fire better than most. And I am much less likely to be careless.”

Joseph accepts that his message strikes at the soul of America’s value system. After all, bigger is supposed to be better. Progress is measured by wider highways, larger square footages and taller skyscrapers. It is hard, he acknowledges, for people to challenge--rather than envy--those who overuse the earth’s resources.

“What we have become is a lazy, desensitized society dependent on companies producing automobiles that pollute the earth, on construction interests cutting down the trees, on subsidized chemical-reliant agribusinesses growing the food, and on a government sending young men to die for oil,” he said.

One might assume that Joseph’s views leave him lonely. But he has many friends who visit to escape the rat race of their own lives. He is close to a grown daughter by a previous marriage. And he and his partner recently became parents.

Three days after the interview, Joseph was to leave for a year in Israel and Africa to study the dynamics of tribal and kibbutz life, and to study alternate housing forms. Upon his return, he said, he hopes to build an experimental village.

“I’d like to re-invent this thing called community--buy a large parcel of land and create a self-sufficient place of peace, where all the electricity, all the water, all the food, all the education, all the necessary things are made or provided within.

“Just think--no taxes, no utility bills, and you don’t have to go to the government for anything. You have your own library, gardens, healers, bakery, create your own music and art--everything self-contained. That would be true community.”