Bruco the Caterpillar

Drive down Interstate 35E in Italy, Texas, and a smiling concrete caterpillar with antennae and painted cowboy boots appears beside the northbound lanes, and it is a working factory. Bruco, which means caterpillar in Italian, houses the Airform and fabric-structures plant of Monolithic Constructors, about 45 miles south of Dallas according to the Monolithic Dome Institute.

The Institute says Bruco was designed by David B. South and Larry Byrne and engineered by Dr Arnold Wilson. It consists of seven seamlessly connected domes, each 60 feet in diameter and 30 feet tall, giving a total length of 250 feet and 14,000 square feet of floor with no pillars. South's family say he had the idea in 1994 and went ahead although some relatives and associates begged him not to; the Institute lists the project as completed in 1995. Texas Highways reported in 2024 that when the domes went up the balloon forms were left inflated and lit from within by sodium lights, leaving truckers to wonder about the "glowworm by the road".