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Bizarre ‘dome house’ in California hits the market for $2.1 million: The architect is a spiritual healer who outfitted the space-inspired yellow house with a meditation temple, cocktail bar and pool
- The house was completed in 2014 after seven years of construction.
- Known as the Bonita Domes, the 1,339-square-foot home has five bedrooms
- The house was designed using a method designed by a NASA architect.
A strange house located in the middle of the Joshua Tree desert and designed with principles intended for lunar habitation just went on the market for $2.1 million.
The California home, known as the Bonita Domes, is more like the rock outcroppings that dot the legendary desert than the typical California type of multimillion-dollar homes.
Completed in 2014, the house was built over seven years by a spiritual healer named Lisa Starr, who drew on the concepts of an Iranian-American architect, Nader Khalili, who was commissioned by NASA to design dome-based structures for celestial rooms.
At 1,339 square feet, the house has five bedrooms and a cocktail bar, and there’s a bathhouse, pool, and meditation temple on the property.
The house is also available to rent on Airbnb for $780 per night.
Known as the Bonita Domes, the 1,339-square-foot home has five bedrooms
The house was completed in 2014 after seven years of construction.
The strange house is located just a five-minute walk from the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.
It was built using a construction method called SuperAdobe, which Khalili helped promote as a long-lasting and sustainable method of low-cost construction.
The process involves building a coiled wire frame, around which and within layers of sandbags filled with wet earth are placed and filled.
“All of the structures were built using minimal resources, materials and supplies that are readily available and 85% of the materials used to build the structures came from earth excavated here on site,” Starr wrote on his website. “Long, continuous sandbags were filled with one coffee can at a time.”
The house is being listed by Coldwell Banker Realty. Listing agent James Bianco described how Khalili helped develop the method and also called out his practice of using domes as supports for built structures destined for space.
“In the mid-1980s, he was assigned by NASA to design lunar and space dwellings, so the result was a shelter that used the most stable of all architectural elements, the arch or dome, and also found local materials. that would isolate — and protect,” Bianco said, according to Business Insider.
One of five bedrooms inside the Bonita Domes in California
One of the living room domes inside the unique house in Joshua Tree
The kitchen inside the Bonita Domes. There is also an attached eating nook
A bathtub built into the wall of one of the bathrooms in the strange house.
The entrance to the Bonita Domes house located in Joshua Tree, California
Inside the house, the windows are kept small for protection from the desert sun during the day.
Shelves and tubs are integrated into the walls of the rooms.
Each bedroom has its own full bathroom and shower.
There are two ‘social domes’ in the house, along with a full kitchen and eating area.
The house is accessible by rugged desert roads.
Bonita Domes is currently the third most expensive listed home in the Joshua Tree area, according to Business Insider.
Prices for the 181 homes listed in the area currently range from $119,999 to $18 million, with a median price of $440,000.
The property is completed with a swimming pool as part of its outdoor landscape.
A lounge where residents can find outdoor shade under the desert sun
The meditation temple can be seen on the property of the strange house.
The Bonita Domes house illuminated at night by Joshua Tree