It also uses more wood, presuming you want your roof at the same height. Y’know, with the c[sup]2[/sup]=a[sup]2[/sup]+b[sup]2[/sup] and all.
There’s no shortage of dome homes. The problem is that they are expensive to heat and cool and its hell to try to clean the windows. Also a three wheel car drives like shit, its like steering with a rudder. Bucky’s ideas are best left in comics and in the minds of people nostalgic of quirky self-promoters.
Although pyramids are usually what come to mind when one thinks of ancient Egypt, there were only three “great” ones (lots of other smaller ones), and I doubt this is what **ralph124c **had in mind. Some temples had structures that slanted out (such as Edfu; see fourth photo on this page). But it is not clear (to me) whether there was a structural reason for it or whether it was just stylistic.
Buttresses have often been used to deal with forces from heavy roofs, which would be similar to using a slanted wall, but seem unnecessary since houses don’t have ceilings like cathedrals. Also a slanted wall would be difficult to actually build since you would need to brace it during construction until the roof was on or at least until all the abutting walls were up (IANASE but I know that a slanted structure will tend to fall down :)).
I’m planning a workshop, a simple rectangle, and thinking about slanting the side walls out slightly. I’ll support the walls with 2x4 braces running from the wall studs to the floor beams. So 2x4s in tension. So I’ll give up a little floor space (under my work tables).
And also: they leak horribly, are extremely difficult to insulate, subdivide internally (so, very noisy and no privacy) or add on to. They were a fad, abandoned years ago by thousands of idealists all over the world for housing that had more practical features.
My husband and I designed and built our own home 25 years ago, and from a designer standpoint I can heartily recommend consulting both the wisdom of the ages (what makes a house loveable and liveable), and commercial homebuilding techniques. There are sound reasons for houses being built the way they are, not all of them “because it’s the cheapest”.
If all you are building is a shed, go wild.
zombie or no
you could more easily get the added volume by enlarging the footprint those desired inches.
Brainssss…
And besides, pyramids are not hollow the way we think of as buildings - they were huge piles of stone with little tunnels built into them, and an occasional room.
See?
The Egyptian Temples were slanted because the walls were wider at the base. To a certain extent this was just decoration, and usually it was just the front pylons and maybe the outside wall. The interior courtyard (with columns around) the hypostyle hall, and the inner sanctuary, all tended to have vertical walls and slightly tapered columns.
This shows Philae Temple, where the original was expanded with a second set of pylons and additional courtyard. The “pylons” are those front paired walls, which we see in the photo are about twice as thick at the bottom as the top. However, all the interior walls are straight vertical. Pretty much all the temples I went in are the same sort of design. Most of the surviving temples are Ptolemic vintage, or New Kingdom with Ptolemic modifications. However, the design was pretty static for millennia. What little construction remains of the temples around the Sphinx, the funerary temple for the middle pyramid (Khafre), circa 2500 BC, shows similar look - vertical interior walls and pillars, slightly sloped outer wall.
I assume the slight outer slope was designed to mimic the shape of Mastabas, rectangular burial buildings that preceded the pyramids. (The first pyramind, the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, started off as a big rock mastaba and was expanded, squared, then subsequent additional smaller ones were layered on top). IIRC the original Mastabas were walls of mud brick, later rock, and the bulk of the item filled with sand and rubble. Obviously to prevent sand from forcing the walls over while minimizing the amount of mud brick made and used, the walls had to be wider at the base to brace against the weight of sand.
However, those pylons, like mastabas and pyramids, are made of pretty much solid rock (although there are stairways and small corridors with windows in some pylons, and burial chambers in the mastabas and pyramids.) It’s one thing to build with solid rock in whatever shape you choose to carve, it’s another with wood frame like most modern houses. Notice no Egyptian walls were built with an “overhang” lean. The solid mass was either vertical or leaning to narrow away from the base.
Note the Tibetan traditional architecture has much the same narrowing rock exterior wall. I imagine many cultures found that when stacking rocks or bricks, you gained a bit more stability by leaning the walls in on both sides so it narrows at the top, much like a pyramid.
When you are building with a bunch of sticks nailed together, tilting simply means the wall needs additional bracing to prevent tipping. You might think where the corners meet makes it self-supporting, but then the wall needs a solid beam from corner to corner, or a brace in the middle, or it will bow in. Dag Otto said it best. A pure vertical wall only has compression loads (unless there’s a really strong wind). A tilted was has to contend with bending loads.
Take note of the strength of our typical construction. Even in the worst hurricanes, rarely does a plain vertical framed or brick wall fail until the wind rips off the roof which is providing much of the lateral/cross corner stability.
You could build a trapezoidal wall like the Egyptian pylon walls so it leans in on both sides; but if built of frame (narrow A-frame?), you have a very wide open empty space inside. Spaces attract rodents, allow fires to travel, allow insulation to fall and move so heat loss becomes a problem, etc. But basically, there’s no reason to do this other than decoration. Plus, the expense of materials and unusual construction add to cost, the unfamiliarity of the construction means mistakes are more likely, etc.
You might use concrete, but that would be eve more expensive. The useful material I could think of doing this with would be cheap - rammed earth or something similar. But, that would required the appropriate climate and again is generally unfamiliar construction. Plus, IIRC Rammed earth typically is done with sliding forms, so you would have to slide the forms up and narrow them at the same time. More complications.