Steve Baer

Steve Baer (October 13, 1938 – May 17, 2024) was an American solar energy inventor and pioneer of passive solar technology.^[1] Originally, as a largely self-taught designer and builder, he worked on small projects in Colorado and New Mexico; in time he and Zomeworks, the company he founded, achieved international recognition.

Baer successfully obtained a number of solar-technology patents. He contributed to industry publications, and wrote a number of books (some of which, in part, publicized Zomeworks' design innovations and products). 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.^[2][3] Baer pioneered and helped popularize the use of Zomes, being considered the creator of Zome Architecture.^[4]

He was one of the 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.^[5]

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 1950s, Baer's mentor was pioneer designer Peter van Dresser, whose work in American solar design and building had begun in the 1930s.^[6] Also, during these years, 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).^[2]

Baer and his wife moved back to the United States, settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he initially worked as a welder of trailer frames for the Fruehauf Trailer Services company.

Baer and Ed Heinz experimented with constructing buildings of unusual geometries that they came to call "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 Maniera Nueva. During this period, he met and worked with Day Charhoudi, also a young solar experimenter, who taught him some principles of physics.^[2]

Early on, Baer became known as the author of Dome Cookbook and Zome Primer. His unconventional "zome" building-design approach, with its multi-faceted geometric lines, has been taken up by French builders in the Pyrenees.^[7] A 2004 book, Home Work edited by Lloyd Kahn, has a section featuring these building.

Baer eventually designed elaborations using the basic principles.

In 1969, Baer founded a company named Zomeworks in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Barry Hickman and Ed Heinz. Through the years, Baer was president and director of the company, remaining active in the areas of concept, experimentation, testing, and development. The company's stance was to eschew government support, and to function strictly as a business.^[8]

Inspired by reading Farrington Daniels' Direct Use of the Sun’s Energy, as well as by working with van Dresser, Baer had become enthused about using solar energy for direct heating of buildings. He began to experiment with practical methods, always seeking to simplify his approach as the experiments proceeded. In spring of 1969, Baer was a key organizer of an important grassroots Western-American conference, Alloy, convening Western-U.S. innovators in design and construction fields.

Baer was benefited with wider recognition by establishing his connection with the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), a product of Stewart Brand and Dick Raymond along with various collaborators. The Fall 1969 edition of the (WEC) carried simply a book review by Baer and a brief description of what Zomeworks was doing at that point;.^[9] When a detailed article about the Alloy conference was published on five full, large-format pages in the voluminous 1971 WEC edition (distributed far and wide by Random House),^[10] Baer and Zomeworks began to gain a reputation among solar enthusiasts in the U.S.^[2]

In the early years at Zomeworks, Baer was able to work with other innovators and idea people, solar designer Day Chahroudi being one, and also Dave Harrison and Dick Henry.^[2] Baer’s approach was to develop strategies and products that simplify rather than complicate; this not only applied to the concept and design of devices, but equally to approaches that add to the self-sufficiency of a building and its occupants' control. In a taped interview, he explained his standpoint: "It’s like this tape recorder we’re using. A pencil can break on you and you can sharpen it with your thumbnail and go right on... but if a circuit board or a resistor or condenser quits somewhere inside this recorder, we’re stopped and there’s probably not a lot we can do about it. That makes me queasy sometimes… I believe the ground rules can be transformed so that technology simplifies life instead of continually complicating it."^[2]

"I care about the spirit of invention," Baer made clear, "I'm an inventor."^[8] Peter van Dresser and Baer, both now prominent in the field, founded the New Mexico Solar Energy Association (NMSEA) in 1972.^[6]

Having developed along with the marketplace, features of devices Zomeworks markets are usable in either conventional or unconventional buildings and sites,^[2] and the company's design approaches are widely applicable; an aspect of the company has been consultation services to architects.

Zomeworks has designed and manufactured a variety of different solar water heaters. One of Zomeworks' early inventions was the Beadwall (U.S. patent 3,903,665, expired), which consists of two sheets of glass with small styrofoam beads blown into the space between them by an air pump at night, to insulate the window areas of the building (the beads being removed by vacuum action in the morning).

The "Track Rack" solar tracker, which Baer and Zomeworks staff developed, is a metal-framed passive-solar dynamic mounting for photovoltaic (PV) modules. With an arrangement of two cylinders filled with freon and connected by a tube at their lowest point, the device uses the differential pressure and movement of entrapped liquid to enable gravity to turn the rack and follow the sun. Depending on heat and hydraulics, and without motors, gears, or computerized controls, the rack enables the PV module to face the sun ("sunflower-wise") for maximum efficiency. To meet the developing solar energy industry, Zomeworks has designed and builds several Track Racks to fit all common photovoltaic modules.

Another invention, the Skylid uses the same configuration of freon-filled cylinders to open and close insulating louvers under a skylight .

While Zomeworks has been known mainly for exploring passive solar strategies and equipment, some of the equipment the company has developed more recently, for solar-driven space cooling, has used active-solar principles. Baer attended the Art Basel fair, in Switzerland, where a full-scale replica of the Baers' own house was exhibited.^[6][11] In 1995, Baer's design work was included in the Contemporary Developments in Design Science exhibit, at St. John the Divine Cathedral, New York City.^[6]

Steve Baer died on May 17, 2024, at the age of 85.^[6]

Zomeworks Corporation is now solely owned by Benjamin Rodefer, with Steve Baer's wife, Holly Baer, serving as the Director of Administration. The company's leadership (as of 2025) has included Mike Elliston (as a Director) and David Nevin as Vice President.

• Baer, Steve (1968), Dome Cookbook, Albuquerque, NM: Lama Foundation
• Baer, Steve (1970), Zome Primer, Albuquerque, NM: Zomeworks Corporation
• Baer, Steve (1977), Sunspots: Collected facts and solar fiction, Albuquerque, NM: Zomeworks Corporation
• Baer, Steve (1977), "Corrales Residence", Passive Solar Heating and Cooling: Conference and Workshop Proceedings, May 18–19, 1976, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Washington, D. C.: Energy Research and Development Administration: 200, hdl:2027/mdp.39015009264428
• Baer, Steve (1977), "Movable Insulation", Passive Solar Heating and Cooling: Conference and Workshop Proceedings, May 18–19, 1976, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Washington, D. C.: Energy Research and Development Administration: 70–72, hdl:2027/mdp.39015009264428
• Baer, Steve (1979), Sunspots: An Exploration of Solar Energy Through Fact and Fiction, Albuquerque, NM: Rodale Press
• Baer, Steve (2012), More Sunspots, Corrales, NM: Baer Books

• 2010 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture^[12][13]

• Denzer, Anthony (2013). The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design. Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0847840052. Archived from the original on 2013-07-26.
• Denzer, Anthony (March 14, 2013). "The Clothesline Paradoxes". solarhousehistory.com.
• Kirk, Andrew (May 31, 2016), "Alloyed: Counterculture Cricoleurs and the Design Science Revival", in Kaiser, David; McCray, W. Patrick (eds.), Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture, University of Chicago Press, pp. 305–390, ISBN 9780226373072
• McPhee, Marnie (July 1989), "Solar heat with perks", Popular Science, vol. 235, no. 1, pp. 76–

• "Steve Baer Resources". solarhousehistory.com. 27 September 2023.