Here’s one for sale on Coyote Street (between Fox Street and Bobcat Street), in Opal, Wyoming –
The same house seen from above –
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make your home in a dome
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Aloha
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the ultimate round house
Round houses with privacy, breathtaking ocean views, a fascinating history — and they’re being given away for free — sign me up!
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island home
Sweet little cylindrical house on Koh Tao, an island in the Gulf of Thailand –
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dome home
A new dome house — apparently called Domed House — is being built in Dover Plains, in NY’s Hudson Valley region –
The house is extremely reminiscent of Wallace Neff’s innovative Airform House — popularly known as the bubble house.
Designed to remedy post-WWII shortages in housing, bubble houses were inexpensive and easy to build, but their unusual form and open-plan layout did not find favor with the US public, not during that ultra-conformist era. Maybe now that tastes have evolved, and cookie cutter suburban ranch houses are less of an ideal, such houses will finally find an appreciative audience.
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Off-beat and off grid
Speaking of Airform-like houses — this off-grid concrete dome in Rainier, Washington, also took the same basic approach to building a circular dwelling, spraying concrete over a sort of inflated balloon. The Redfin listing for the home, which was built in 2008 and sold to new owners in 2016, includes photos that document parts of the building process –
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round house memento
This milk bottle cap is a memento of a long-closed dairy, which itself was named after an even older, no longer extant, round house –
The Round House Dairy, in Newport, Rhode Island, opened in 1926 and closed in 1970. It was named after a house on the estate where the dairy was first established.
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curves inside and out
Beijing-based architecture firm Penda China has designed a beautiful variation on circularity –
Called House O, the curves of its outer walls are echoed by curving inner walls and a swooping staircase –
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mid-century mod
A mid-century modern round house, designed in 1960 by engineer and entrepreneur Gilbert Spindel, is now on the market in Shawnee, Oklahoma –
Dubbed the Geodesica, the house’s blue prints were advertised in newspapers and magazines, and several were built. The Shawnee house is among the eight or nine surviving round houses that Spindel designed, most of which were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s in suburban neighborhoods in the South, including in Jacksonville, Florida, Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Magnolia, Arkansas.
The one-story house is partially open plan, with a kitchen/living room and several bedrooms and bathrooms arranged around a central dining room –
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geodesica + 1
Coincidentally, another Gilbert Spindel-designed mid-century round house — a Geodesica — is also for sale, this one in Lake Charles, Louisiana –
Built in 1964, the house underwent a top to bottom revamp in 2010, months of work to reach the owner’s stated goal of “bringing it back to the ’60s.”
The groovy result, with white shag carpets, glittery wall paper, a purple bathroom and a pink sun room, can be seen on the Retro Renovation blog. Here’s a glimpse of its living room –
The house’s color palette has been toned down significantly since then, but it’s still an unusual, appealing house, ready for a new owner who’s ready to think outside the box.
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