Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Domes, Pattern Languags, Cliff Dwellings & flexible houses

[Vinay Gupta (vinay]

Michael Mariner:
>Not in "modern geodesic domedom, but circular structures (which Thomas is 
>citing as inappropriate for "patterns."  in older civilizations and 
>especially with indigenous people's there are gorgeous (to me) examples 
>of a bunch of circular structures wonderfully fitting together, defining 
>spaces, etc.

Y'know, I hadn't considered that... I suppose that a lot, perhaps even
a majority of the village-type dwellings around the world have been
round.  That's a really good point.

I suppose that the classic american idea of individual lots with
fences between makes that kind of arrangement harder, because the
fade-out between one space and another isn't flowing but discrete,
but perhaps it doesn't have to be that way.

>Appreciate your candor, Vinay.  I'd urge you to branch out a bit and 
>become more conversant on designing develoments with basically circular 
>footprints.

<grin>

Always something to learn...

>circular dwellings from Tipis to Yurts to Hogans, etc.  Living in them 
>gives you a whole different consciousness when there are no corners, no 
>boxes to confine your thinking.

A lot of dome people are really big on this way of looking at domes;
it's an interesting one.

I'm rather... well... I'd love to say I believed it's easier to get
one's vision to cohere living in a round house, but I don't.  They do
feel great though!

>I could see a cohousing development with rectangular dwellings around the 
>periphery and a nice big common house dome in the center.  Perhaps homes 
>could have some half-dome greenhouses or vestibules or living rooms to 
>help relate it to the common house.

I think it'd be quite hard to mix and match a big dome and smaller
rectanguar buildings.  A big dome is a very powerful architectural
feature, and smaller boxes would tend to look very strange beside it,
I think.

Mind you, rounded stadiums are not uncommon - there's a *huge* concrete
dome stadium somewhere in the USA which I saw when I was roaming the
country, and it didn't totally overpower the other features, so I don't know.

I guess it's one of those things that I'd like to see drawings and models
of before saying "yeah, that would be neat"!

>Also, building flexibly so you don't have to remodel everytime the 
>residents' needs change.  For instance, when kids leave home and a large 
>house isn't required for the parents, perhaps the house could be designed 
>so they could occupy part of it while renting or selling part they're not 
>using....

This is interesting.

One of the really underused features of domes is that all the interior
walls are non-loadbearing (assuming the floor systems are done with an
eye to this, of course).  This means that one can create and remove
partitions in the dome a couple of hours, perhaps half a day for a large
wall.  One could create and remove entire sets of rooms as the uses to
which the house is put change: the overall space doesn't grow, but
at different times it can be divided in very different ways.  I think
an architect working with this in mind could produce some very flexible,
very high utility buildings, but this sort of flex has to be designed
in from the ground up to avoid ending up with things like ten rooms
which all end in 36^ pie-slice angles.

>Yer friendly circular building fanatic,

Yer friendly circular building vendor,

vinay

Vinay Gupta
Worldview Livingspace