crumbling communist icon

A striking circular structure, Bulgaria’s communist-era Buzludzha Monument has been allowed to fall apart.

sauna with a view

The Chalet Sereno, in Megève, France, has a pretty cool hillside sauna –

casa rotonda

An interesting and somewhat mysterious round house, crowned by a distinctive cupola-style lookout, in the town of Cornuda, Italy –

romanian circle house

In Bucharest, Romania, a circle house from architects Razvan Barsan & Partners –

battersea mews

In London, just off Battersea High Street, an oval house for sale –

modern yurt

The Jero Shelter, a modern yurt from German designer Uula Jero –

Made of canvas, marine plywood, stainless steel hardware, and polyester rope, it can be built by three people in around 2 hours.

Buy one.

villa circuitus

Villa Circuitus, the first round house in Sweden to meet passive house standards –

could you live in a house with no corners?

A centuries old round house — once used as a pub, and before that a toll house — now for sale in Kettering, Northamptonshire, UK –

a labour of love

She practiced alternative medicine; he was a doctor. But despite his conventional facade it was he — and decidedly not she — who dreamed of living in a circular house.

The doctor, property-owner and soon-to-be-round-house-builder explained his thinking on an episode of the British television show Grand Designs. His architect sent him a drawing, he said, that was a perfect circle. “I took one look at it, and thought, that’s great; it’s what nature would do: nature doesn’t grow squares … it just grabbed me.”

The story of how this man took a compelling idea and made a house out of it — and how he somehow managed to convince his reluctant spouse to stick with him during the process — is unexpectedly moving.

At the end of the episode, narrator Kevin McCloud speaks about the house’s structure, but he could just as easily be describing the couple’s relationship: “the contradiction between the square and the round is completely resolvable. A building can take opposite ideas and synthesize from them something new and exciting.”