the casa bola

This month’s edition of Apartamento magazine features an interview with Brazilian architect Eduardo Longo, who designed — and has lived for decades in — a spherical house in São Paulo.

Built by Longo himself over a five-year period, beginning in the early 1970s, the house was meant to be the prototype for a utopian project of apartment blocks made of up dozens of spherical structures.  The apartment blocks were never built, but Longo has now lived more than 30 years in his “ball house,” or Casa Bola.

Made of smooth molded concrete, the house is 25 feet in diameter, and has four levels, three bedrooms, several bathrooms, a dining room, a living room, a kitchen, and a hammock. Its decor is strictly minimalist and very white. Much more colorful on the outside, it sports a bright yellow slide that exits from below and a spherical yellow decoration on top.

Longo’s son Lucas, who grew up in the Casa Bola, now has a spherical house of his own. Both structures have been featured on the TV series The World’s Most Extreme Homes. The son’s house, whose levels are linked by curving ramps rather than stairs, is somewhat reminiscent of Eduardo Longo’s 1980 design for a utopian pavilion.

an affinity for curves

With the death of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer on December 5, the world has lost one of the leading proponents of curved, rounded, wavy and spiraling forms. A modernist innovator, Niemeyer, who began working in the late 1930s, eschewed the straight lines and boxy shapes that had characterized modernism up to that time.

“Right angles don’t attract me. Nor straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man,” explained Niemeyer in The Curves of Time, his 1998 memoir. “What attracts me are free and sensual curves. The curves we find in mountains, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the woman we love.”

an artist’s round design

Plans for a round house in Arroyo Grande, California, from artist Donald Judd -

buy a round house

The Orcutt House, in Worthington, Ohio, “comprises two interpenetrating circles.” Built in 1958, its design, by architect Theodore van Fossen, reflects Frank Lloyd Wright’s principles of organic architecture. Now on sale for $749,000.

Another round house is available in Dalton, Georgia, for a mere $125,000. Built in 1972, it’s a two-story house with exposed beams.

renovated 1970s kit house

In Alamo, California, a run-down 1970s kit house was saved from likely demolition by new buyers Wayne and Marilyn Rasmussen, who renovated it rather than tearing it down.  ”Appreciation for a round house is an acquired taste — it’s not familiar, and, until you understand it, it doesn’t seem to be a comfortable living place where you lay down with your pets and the kids are watching TV and there’s the smell of food cooking.”

botta goes around in circles

Another round house from Swiss architect Mario Botta, this one in Losone, Switzerland -

Botta has designed a number of structures with circular elements, including a round house in Ticino, Switzerland, a bank in Basel, Switzerland, and a museum in San Francisco.

all redwood round house

In Topanga, California, a round house from the 1970s whose interior and exterior are entirely redwood:

Inside are curves and a sculptural fireplace:

 

mario botta’s casa rotonda

Swiss architect Mario Botta designed a round house in Stabio, Ticino, Switzerland, in 1980, that is rather monumental in its symmetry -

Nine years later, he designed one in Losone, just 60 kilometers away.

In his 1986 book on Botta, architect and artist Stuart Wrede described the Stabio house as follows: “Built on the edge of a rural field … Botta’s cylindrical house turns in on itself. However, while rejecting any dialogue with the surrounding houses, its richly textured form establishes a strong rapport with the landscape, in particular the curving ridge behind it.”

Here’s a glimpse into Botta’s design process.

round entrepreneurship

In 1986, the Los Angeles Times ran an article describing a Malibu-based company, called Round Structures, Inc., that was marketing a construction system for building round houses. It explained: “The basic Round House is a 36-foot-diameter circle that sits on a 16-foot-diameter pedestal; the house has about 1,017 square feet of floor space. The pedestal is extended for hillside applications and eliminates much of the normal site preparation needed on difficult terrain.”

The owner of Round Structures, Dennis Torres, who had bought the company from its founder, told the Times: “The aesthetics of it (the building system) never really appealed to me when I first saw it. It was the practicality that made so much sense.”

But apparently the structures weren’t practical enough to attract the customers necessary to keep the company going.  A 2010 Google search found the owner running a Malibu-based dispute resolution business.

the only truly round of the round houses

Most round houses are actually cylindrical.  But this one‘s the real thing -