Actually its 12 sided. It comes as a kit, but I’ll have someone who knows what they are doing put it together.
My wife and I are thinking of having one built on property we own in Hawaii.
My wife likes the idea, but I’m not completely sold on the idea of a round house.
Here’s some photos from the website.
Not quite round, but at one point in my life I lived in a hexagon home. It was a prefab thing, and done very cheaply.
The only corners were in the center of the house, which would have made furniture placement weird if I’d had real furniture. At the time I was in graduate school and had a waterbed right on the floor, beanbag chairs, a cable-spool table, brick & board bookcases, that kind of thing, which adapted real well.
The bathroom had a very odd space where a washing machine was supposed to fit, assuming you could get one that was either really small, or triangular shaped. The closets all had odd triangular shapes.
All the doors except one were sliding patio doors, so my roommate and I called it the Glass House. It was a neat look, but again, a problem with the furniture if you had real furniture, as you couldn’t really put anything up against the wall except on the inside walls. For instance in the living room, my piano took up all the room on the only straight wall.
Two bedrooms, and each one had a sliding glass patio door out into a small courtyard. That was neat.
Your pictures look great. Mine was a lot cheaper, but still we thought it was kind of cool.
They can be great as one big room, but pretty inefficient if you try to subdivide.
Would this be a vacation home or a permanent one? As a vacation home, it’s really, really neat. But I’m not sure I would enjoy living with it full time.
I’ve spent a great deal of time in a yurt, which is a lot like that, only actually round. It’s…interesting. I like the flow of the space, and the open design. I did not like trying to figure out where to put the bookshelves or dressers - being straight backed, they lost a lot of space (and nick knacks and books) behind them.
I think this not-really-round house might be the perfect solution. Still good “flow” and open design, but with straight walls to put straight furniture against.
I’ve slept in an Octagon Cottage before. As in, I grew up in Minnesota, where in summer, people go up to The Cabin or The Cottage on The Lake.
The Cottage that I was “related” to, was octagonal. The bathroom was a smallish wedge, there was a bedroom with two sets of built-in bunk beds, with space enough for a cot in the middle of the floor, and at least one bedroom large enough for a double or queen sized bed. There was an oddly shaped (probably octagonal) storage closet in the center, and about half the floorspace was a large open room which contained the kitchen, the dining area, and the living room area. This space looked out over the lake.
I’m unaware of any issues with furniture arrangement, but, well, given that I visited for a long weekend every couple of years during my growing up years, if there were issues, they weren’t my problem.
Given the possibility of high winds, it might be an ideal shape.
Even if the outside wall consists of straight segments, useless or awkward zones are made when straight-backed things are placed against any two consecutive sides.
My feeling is that yurts and other circular/very multi-sided houses are best served by placing essentially no furniture against the outside wall, except window seats and such built for the purpose. Make linear structures out “in the space,” by placing furniture pieces against each other or perpendicular-to-exterior partitions (which need not be “real” walls, nor full-height). Thus, cut parts of the round into semi-room wedges, radiated around the center. Meanwhile, the outside wall is left open as a ring of windows and alcoves.
A surprisingly large amount of the square footage can be distinguished into functionally separate spaces this way without compromising the light and openness of the overall space, as long as every wedge has windows and remains open to the central space.
Multi-sided houses when they’re empty may seem full of air and light. Then people proceed to block off much of that feeling by clogging up that outside wall. Exterior wall is at a premium in such designs. The circle has the smallest circumference-to-area ratio, which is a good thing for winter insulation, but a bad thing for natural lighting and connectivity to the surroundings.
I think it would be perfect in Hawaii. That plan seems to be focusing on lots of glass and open space. You’d get great views of your gorgeous property (because it’s HI, of course it’s gorgeous.) You would also get amazing cross breezes going through the house especially if the cupola has working windows.
This is a Google aerial image of a house that my best friend’s grandfather designed and built back in the early 70s.
I can’t remember whether the outside walls are round, but on on the inside, there is an arc to the walls. After Katrina when the sheetrock was all replaced, they had to do something to the sheets with a big form they made to curve them.
The arc is gentle enough on the inside walls that you can place furniture against the wall without it looking funny. The floorplan isn’t all that great…I feel the rooms are small, but by the early 1970s standards for houses of a similar size around that area, the rooms were probably considered big.
The smaller circles in the picture are a carport and a poolhouse/gazebo.
Yeah I think I could suffer in my round house in Hawaii. Take me with you!!
I was going to say yes, til I saw this comment, I didn’t realize you couldn’t really break round houses up easily. I absolutely HATE “great rooms” or what they call an open floor plan.
I loved that house, other than it had WAY too much wood for my taste. The windows and skylight were wonderful, as was the wraparound porch. But I like my dining area to be at least somewhat separate from the living room/family room.
I’d prefer an an actual dining ROOMroom, but if that’s not possible then at least separated by the floor plan and shape of the area somewhat.
How on Earth would I curl up in a fetal position in the corner? There’d be no corners!
Yeah, the very best interior design I’ve seen for a roundish house (described upthread) has some functional separation, but it’s still very much an open plan, and would suffer by being closed.
It’s relatively easy to build an L- or T-shaped-footprint house with several rectangular rooms in which every room has light on two sides (which is a huge, huge difference from having light on only one side)… achieving a similar effect with a round house basically requires having very few “true” rooms.
One thing to consider is that round or nearly round houses often have weird acoustics. I’ve heard people complain that they can hear everything going on exactly opposite their room. You might be careful where you place your bedroom.
I hope you don’t have misbehaving kids.
“That’s it! Go stand in the corner!”
“But, but. . .”
I was going to say that I would only like it if there were rooms that were square within it. But it sounds like that is impossible. (Okay, possible if you don’t mind wasted space.
Yes, ever since touring the Dymaxion House at The Henry Ford museum.
Not if it was a round house dispensed by Chuck Norris. No one could survive that.
Needs more drapes. Otherwise, ok.