The Baggins End Domes, also known as The Domes or the Davis Domes, are a

student housing cooperative A student housing cooperative, also known as co-operative housing, is a housing cooperative for student members. Members live in alternative cooperative housing that they personally own and maintain. These houses are designed to lower housing cos ...

at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

built by students in 1972. They are part of the Sustainable Research Area which includes the Student Farm and the Experimental College Gardens. Inspired by

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...

, there are 14

domes A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

, featuring painted fiberglass-shell exteriors, the insides of which were coated with sprayed polyurethane foam, and "core-walls" with a kitchen on one side and a bathroom on the other. On January 25, 2011, an announcement was made by Student Housing that no new leases will be granted for the following academic year. The Sustainable Living/ Learning Task Force with faculty and students was initiated to investigate options. Domes residents, also known as Domies, ended up collaborating with the Solar Community Housing Association (SCHA) cooperative in

Davis, California Davis is the most populous city in Yolo County, California. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 66,850 in 2020, not including the on-campus population of the University of California, Davi ...

. SCHA and Domies raised money to repair the domes and lobbied the university to transfer management of the Domes to SCHA. A community build event was held on November 3–6, where hundreds of volunteers performed the majority of the work, which included creating wheelchair accessible pathways and gardens, building new railings, and patching foam. SCHA signed a ground lease with UC Davis at the end of December 2011, 14 new Domies moved into 7 of the domes at the start of January. The work was continued through July 2012.

References

{{coord, 38, 32, 36, N, 121, 45, 53, W, display=title University of California, Davis campus Houses in Yolo County, California Residential buildings in California Student housing cooperatives in the United States