In the late 1970s, when they were at the height of their popularity, Binishells appeared all over Australia like soap bubbles.

This was because Bini, the man who came up with the idea for the domes while playing tennis under an inflatable roof, had been hired by the public works department of New South Wales to build schools; his prototypes were adapted for use in homes, gymnasiums, libraries, and shopping centers.

In addition to serving as grain silos in the deserts of Afghanistan, the structures were also built to shield seismographs atop Mount Etna in Sicily.

Despite the mountain’s frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, one of these constructions is still standing after half a century.

La Cupola in Sardinia, a now-derelict cliff-top monument to the love affair between Michelangelo Antonioni, a maestro of Modernist Italian cinema, and his muse, the actress Monica Vitti, is speculated to be Bini’s favorite.

In 2013, just as the third and final installment of the “Iron Man” trilogy was wrapping up production, the Downeys made the decision to have Nicolas construct their dome.

Nicol, who had been laboring to update his father’s Binishells and bring them up to code on a secluded tract of property near Joshua Tree, was identified as a potential candidate by a common acquaintance, the English designer Robert Clydesdale.

Nicol’s father had created the Binishells. The actor expressed initial skepticism but ultimately came around to supporting the concept.

At a ritzy members-only club in Hollywood, Nicol asks the waiter, “KINDLY BRING ME ONE RAW EGG,” and the waiter obliges.

When the egg arrives on a platter, he squeezes the ends of it between his fingers and thumb to demonstrate the structural integrity of the Binishell, which, throughout the course of the meal, he compares to the Palais Bulles on the French Riviera, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Pantheon in Rome, an athlete squatting low to the ground, an exhaling pair of lungs, a baby’s bottom, the miracle of childbirth, and a hug.

“Call it biomimicry or call it borrowing from nature, but the beauty is that it works,” he says. “Call it biomimicry or call it borrowing from nature.”