Steve Baer

Baer's unconventional "zome" building-design approach, with its multi-faceted geometric lines, has been taken up by French builders in the Pyrenees. A 2004 book, Home Work edited by Lloyd Kahn, has a section featuring these buildings.

Besides designing, testing, and fabricating solar-energy equipment, Baer and his company have provided consulting services to architects. Baer's design work was included in the Contemporary Developments in Design Science exhibit at St. John the Divine Cathedral, New York City, in 1995.

In the early years at Zomeworks, Baer was able to work with other innovators and idea people, such as the solar designers Day Chahroudi, Dave Harrison, and Dick Henry. In 1975, Zomeworks published an illustrated book, Sunspots, written by Baer and illustrated by Criss-Cross; focusing on solar-design principles.

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).

Steve Baer (born 1938) is an American inventor and pioneer of passive solar technology. Baer 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.