OAKLEY - It's not so much a house as a philosophical statement with four bedrooms and a 5-acre yard.

Wandering along in the country near Oakley, you may have spotted what looks like two collections of giant, off-color snowballs melting into spacious green lawns. These are concrete geodesic homes, and one of them is occupied by Scott and Nancy Sullivan, who believe they've found a solid Shangri-La far from the madding crowd that can't think outside the box design of conventional stick-built housing.

"We love it, but we do have a lot of landscaping to do outside," explains Nancy Sullivan, who doesn't care for the present tangle of plants growing too close to the snowballs' foundation. "My feeling is it needs to be as Zen-like as possible out here because this house promotes that kind of feeling - a feeling of harmony in design. Our home is based on Buckminster Fuller's work."

The late Fuller would be proud to take the bow. Described in various biographies as inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet and cosmologist, he pioneered the concept of what is known as geodesic homes. The name comes from a Latin phrase meaning "earth dividing," which (it's complicated) refers to a construction method using a network of triangles to create a sphere or dome.

Fuller, who lived in a dome in Carbondale for a while and died in 1983, didn't believe in any precast stereotypes when he sat down to design stuff. Once bankrupt and contemplating suicide by throwing himself in Lake Michigan, he turned around and decided to dry off and go build a better world instead. He got around to housing in the 1940s and came up with the geodesic concept after throwing out all the rules:

"I started with the universe - as an organization of energy systems of which all our experiences and possible experiences are only local instances," he said. "I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers."

Sure. Anyway, the geodesic dome is a remarkable structure with an amazingly efficient use of space - a dome covering the same floor space as a box-shaped building has only 38 percent of the box's surface area. Overlay your geodesic with six inches of insulation and 2 to 6 inches of concrete like the series of three 20-foot-tall domes that form the Sullivan home, and the result is an energy-efficient nest of igloos as steady as a rock.

"And here's the unexpected part," says Nancy Sullivan, leading visitors through the front door into the central dome: from the outside, the snowballs somehow appear smaller than they are before guests find themselves stepping into a soaring 17-foot-high living room with a diameter of more than 30 feet. Furnishings such as a 9-foot pool table, a baby grand piano, couches and chairs all seem to float in the sea of overarching space.

"It makes your jaw drop when you first see it," says Nancy Sullivan, 34, the technology coordinator for DeLand-Weldon School District. "And when Scott and I first saw it, we both went 'Wow ¦' there was no question we had to have this house."

The original owners built the 3,300-square-foot residence in 1979, using plans they apparently found in Popular Science magazine. The Sullivans bought the geodesic dream in 2003, and despite the odd frost-induced leaking crack in the dome - you patch it like you would a concrete sidewalk - not much has rained on their parade.

Remodeling interior space, however, is a major math test. "It's a good challenge, a learning process, there are no right angles in here," explains Scott Sullivan, 43, who programs computers for Archer Daniels Midland Co. "You call a carpenter, and he will just turn around and walk away."

But with challenge also comes opportunity, like mulling over all of the possible future color choices for the domes' exterior. "National Guard helicopters from Decatur Airport use our house as a turning marker," says Scott. "Maybe we could have a great big smiley face."

And friends haven't been slow in floating other ideas, either: "We've had some people suggest we ought to paint the domes in yellow for banana, brown for chocolate and, say, red for strawberries," says Nancy. "And then our house could look like a great big banana split."

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.