An idea that wouldn't go away — carried through a skate company, a hundred and fifty chickens, two hundred trailer loads and a year of starting over. Now it finally gets built.
I'm Stephen — a builder and lifelong skater from Adelaide. At nineteen I started a skateboard company and a shop. About ten years ago I came up with Atmosfarm: the idea of pulling water out of the air and wrapping it all into a self-contained dome.
Five years ago I moved off-grid to chase it. I built a skatepark, ended up breeding around 150 chickens, and slowly turned a patch of land into a life. Then the property sold — sixty days to move everything, about 205 trailer loads, and somewhere in the middle of it I lost my licence and was moving my whole world by wheelbarrow and skateboard.
Everything was telling me to quit. I didn't.
I rebuilt on a new property, and now I'm doing the thing I should've done years ago — actually building Atmosfarm, out loud, with the cameras rolling.
Filming the whole thing from day one — and launching it all on my birthday.
Cameras on, ground broken. I start building the dome's frame and filming every day — but nothing gets published yet.
Foundation first, then the geodesic frame is fabricated and raised — lower ring, upper shell and apex.
The top intake and the downpipe system go in — the path that pulls air down through the dome.
Condensation and filtration come online — the first harvested water, including the parts that don't work yet.
Pond and aquaponics (a portable tank), the cover, the entrance and the garden beds — the dome becomes a living system.
Exhaust and landscaping finished, the 24/7 livestream rig set up and tested, and the launch films cut and ready.
The channel goes live, the 24/7 livestream starts, and I premiere "I Built a Dome in 100 Days" — at the birthday party.
Most projects only show you the finished, polished result. I want to do the opposite — show the whole process: the dead ends, the redesigns, the things that break, and the small wins that keep it moving.
Maybe it works. Maybe it completely fails. Maybe it turns into something else entirely. Either way, it'll be real — and you can watch it happen.
Subscribe and follow @atmosfarm to watch a ten-year idea finally get built — start to finish.