Intro to Round Housing

Throughout history, and especially prehistory, humans have worked to provide shelter for themselves and their families utilizing round structures. This can be seen in the iron age round houses of Great Britain and seems to have finally gone out of favor around 1000AD, the switch to rectangular homes apparently having begun with the roman conquest of Britain. Inuit igloos, African round huts, Tibetan Yurts, Native American Tipis and Kivas are just some of the more obvious examples of round architecture. In China, the Hakka built circular earthen fortresses are worthy of study. See links below.

Round Houses are simple to design and build. They utilize less material than rectangular structures of the same area. They lend themselves to construction by natural materials including earth, adobe, wood and grass. It is more of a challenge to utilize modern manufactured materials (rectangular sheets of stuff) but do-able if you can think in different ways. It’s not just thinking outside the box, but thinking in the round and in 3 dimensions that’s tricky.

A circular open floor plan allows heat to distribute easily. In spite of appearances, floor plans are not difficult to come up with. Just use your imagination, again and again. Eventually you’ll get something that feels comfortable.

References:

English Round Houses, early and not:
Celtic museum with old roundhouse reproductions
Sutton Hoo
Limetreefarm roundhouse
Veryan roundhouse in Cornwall

Chinese Round Castles:
Hakkan Earthen Fortresses
Hakkan Roundhouse photo album
Hakkan House a Architechture

Links to building round houses:
Building an Iron Age English round house
Mother Earth: Building a round straw bale house
A cord wood round hut
Various round housing styles