Стив Баэр: Пассивті күн энергиясының новаторы және зом архитектурасының құрметтісі

American architect
the Chicago investor and activist

Steve Baer (born 1938) is an American inventor and pioneer of passive solar technology. Baer pioneered and helped popularize the use of zomes. He took a number of solar power patents, wrote a number of books and publicized his work. Baer served on the board of directors of the U. S. Section of the International Solar Energy Society, and on the board of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. He was the founder, chairman of the board, president, and director of research at Zomeworks Corporation. as well as one of creators of Zometool, a construction set educational toy or device that had evolved from playground climbers and other structures that had been created by Zomeworks.

Steve Baer was born in Los Angeles. In his teens while a student at Midland School, he read Lewis Mumford and decided technology needn’t necessarily degrade or complicate people's lives. In the latter 1950s, Baer worked at various jobs and attended Amherst College and UCLA. In 1960, he joined the U. S. Army, being stationed in Germany for three years. He also was married in 1960. After discharge from the Army, he and his wife, Holly settled in Zurich, Switzerland, where he worked as a welder and attended Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, studying mathematics. Here he became interested in the possibilities of building innovative structures using polyhedra (non rectangular polyhedrons). Baer and his wife moved back to the United States, settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Baer initially worked as a welder of trailer frames for the Fruehauf Trailer Services company. He founded the company Zomeworks with Barry Hickman and Ed Heinz.

Bear and Ed Heinz experimented with constructing buildings of unusual geometries that they came to called "zomes" or Zome Architecture, often using heavy sheet metal as the main exterior material. Some of the earliest experiments were carried out in cooperation with members of the intentional communities Drop City and Manara Nueva. Baer had also become interested in using solar energy for direct heating of buildings, inspired by reading Farrington Daniels' Direct Use of the Sun’s Energy. He began to experiment with practical methods, always seeking to simplify his approach as the experiments proceeded. Steve Baer was a key organizer of an important grassroots Western American conference, Alloy, focusing on these matters. Because the conference was spotlighted in the Whole Earth Catalog, Baer and Zomeworks became better known among solar enthusiasts in the U. S. Baer also was known as the author of Dome Cookbook and Zome Primer.