A diverse array of traditional round houses — from Ethiopia to Ireland — via round houses on Pinterest –
africa
modernist mogadishu
Odd, bunker-like round houses in Mogadishu, built in the 1930s –
I wonder if they still exist.
Mogadishu evidently witnessed a period of modernist expansion in the 1930s, including the construction of several majestic art deco buildings. Most were badly damaged if not destroyed during Somalia’s decades of civil war.
round houses with a view
Sunrise in northern Ethiopia, near Lalibela –
build different
In a village full of rectangular houses near the town of Grimari, Central African Republic, one house stands out –
psychedelic african hut
In the Gambia, a new take on an old form –
les maisons ballons
A colony of Wallace Neff’s bubble houses (“maisons ballons”) in Dakar — as they look now –
And as they looked in 1949, when they were built –
traditional round houses of tanzania
a 1940s housing bubble
Wallace Neff, a Southern California architect who made Spanish-style mansions for Hollywood stars in the ’30s and ’40s, also tried his hand at designing innovative, low-cost housing for the poor. His Airform houses, often called bubble houses, were inexpensive and easy to build –
Meant to remedy 1940s housing shortages, the houses never caught on in the United States. Only a few hundred of them were built here, rather than the thousands that Neff expected, and nearly all have since been torn down.
round houses 