Round House Weirdness

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Like a triple play or a blue moon, round houses are rare and wonderful things. But even though we always stop to look, we rarely buy. Round houses just don’t fit our image of home–a front door tucked under a gable roof. Instead, they look like something that’s just landed from another universe.

A mid-century modern house with a curved roof and large windows, surrounded by lush greenery, including a tall tree and well-manicured bushes. A brick pathway leads to the entrance on a sunny day.

howdy neighbor!

Building materials may be one reason we live in boxes rather than bowls. Teepees and yurts made of cloth and skins are self-supporting without a foundation. Even more contemporary materials like steel and concrete can be molded into round structures. But most home-building is stick-built construction. It takes effort and skill to shape two-by-fours into a round structure. (A more subtle influence might be lot shape–you don’t find many circular pieces of property.)

When we do build round, it’s often with a mission. In the 1850s, Orson Squire Fowler advocated his Octagonal Houses claiming they were cheaper to build and easier to heat. He was also an advocate of phrenology and wrote an advice book, “Perfection of Character.”

A large, historic white octagonal house with blue shutters and a wraparound porch. It sits behind a green lawn. A blue historical marker is prominently displayed in the foreground, indicating the site's significance.

maybe the bumps on your skull mean you are confused by a round house

More recent round houses include Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House, which he designed to use heat and water more efficiently. Fuller was a perfectionist and refused to begin production on an unfinished prototype. But the Dymaxion house, which ignored local site conditions and architectural traditions, probably never would have become a popular new neighbor.

A black and white photo of a futuristic, dome-shaped metal house resembling a UFO. In the foreground, a person and a dog are standing, with a vintage car parked nearby. There are trees in the background under a cloudy sky.

pet goat notwithstanding, just not home sweet home

The round house, may be shorthand for a kind of jet-pack futurism or ski lodge grooviness, but it’s not the kind of place we like to call home.

An octagonal wooden cabin with a wraparound deck is surrounded by tall trees. The cabin has a chimney and large windows. The setting is a forested area with a view of distant hills under a clear blue sky.

what would Norman Rockwell say?

2 Responses to “Round House Weirdness”

    GK

    While a round shape ought to be very efficient (less enclosure to capture the same interior space), this is probably more than offset by construction difficulty.

    The hassle in building them has always made them rare and thus seen as the home of oddballs, villains, and millionaires. I’d think that any neighborhood that had one also had childhood myths about its occupants

    Of course you are missing one of the more famous round houses, the one in “diamonds are forever” where James Bond has his fight with Bambi and Thumper:

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bR-7QEqMhsU/TiCTESYqasI/AAAAAAAAAgo/bQqvixden6o/s1600/Elrod-House+diamondsareforever.jpg

    claudia

    Of course, how could I overlook this perfect proof of my point that round houses are built for people with a mission–in this case, world domination!