First constructed in the 3rd millenium BC in what is now southwest Scotland, prehistoric round houses continued to be built up through the UK’s Roman period, particularly in the north and west of the country.
In recent decades, archeologists have discovered and excavated an enormous number of ancient round house sites. As of 2008, the number of excavated round houses in Britain had nearly reached 4,000.
Round houses disrupt the rectangular grid –
While they’re not, strictly speaking, unique — a badly overused word in real estate — they’re still an unconventional choice in our rectilinear world.
The archaeological site at Jarlshof, in the Shetland Isles, includes remains of Iron Age round houses that date from between 200 BC and 800 AD –
There are queer people in the world — a great many of them — and it is not strange that there are also queer houses. Now, as our little book is made for everybody, it is but just that queer people and their houses should be represented in it.
Very few persons, we presume, will desire to build a circular house, although it is the form, as geometry demonstrates, in which the greatest possible space may be inclosed by a given amount of wall; but for the oddity of the thing, or because economy of space may be secured, somebody may wish to do it, and look for a design to adopt or imitate. Here it is!
Curious about what it’s like to live in a round house? Try one out — there are circular homes available as vacation rentals in Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, Hawaii, Arizona, Texas, and New York, as well as in Costa Rica, Jamaica, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Honduras, the Bahamas, the Gambia, the Virgin Islands, Baja California, Mexico, and Jalisco, Mexico.
Huge, ancient round houses in Fujian province, China –
John Lautner, an innovative modernist architect who worked in the ’40s through the ’70s, designed a number of curving, round, arched, and wavy homes in California. He also liked triangles and odd-shaped polygons. What one doesn’t see a lot of in his designs are rectangles, right angles, and squares.
Perhaps his most famous house — shaped like a flying saucer — is the Chemosphere, an LA landmark.
A Lautner design with a round roof and zigzag glazing, known as the Pearlman Cabin, was built a few years earlier in Idyllwild –
Another house from that same period, called the Hatherall House, had a dramatic circular “great room” –
This jewel of a house, in Palm Springs, featured in the movie “Diamonds Are Forever” –
Like Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he studied with, Lautner was a prolific and successful architect who saw more than 100 of his designs built. He worked primarily in California, though a few of his works can be found elsewhere. Sadly, a number of his houses and buildings have been torn down, some quite recently.
A fairly comprehensive listing of Lautner’s works can be found here.
round houses 