Gunite Bubbles

[Radiopeg]

quote:

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Originally posted by csgray

This is a really amazing house:
http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/archi...008/07/11/

Carol

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I really like the colored light circles. I'd enjoy an outside wall like that.

[Peter Epperson]

quote:Originally posted by csgray

This is a really amazing house:
http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/archi...008/07/11/

Carol


I really like the colored light circles. I'd enjoy an outside wall like that"



I like it too. I really like it. I appreciate the design effort and the obvious skill in building it, but could you live there? I think it's a wonderful sculpture but probably not a very comfortable home.

[csgray]

Like many architect designed houses it is more a piece of art than a usable structure, but as a piece of sculpture it is inspiring. There are things about it that are usable ideas though.

Frank Loyd Wright was notorious for arrogantly ignoring the needs and wishes of his clients and instead designing what he wanted to build. The people who commissioned Falling Water hated it, in part because all the furniture was built in and it was damp and cold in the winter.

Carol

[Kapohocat]

Here is a link to more of Javier's work - http://www.arquitecturaorganica.com/inicio_i.html - Javier Sensasiain - BioArchitecture Some interesting ideas here! Could be very Puna-centric!

FLW was just a novelty mostly IMHO - I have a couple of books on his design, and have seen many of his houses - because when I was young and impressionable, I thought he was "it". He and Mies Van Der Rohe. Looking through the books now, there are some interesting features but over all I think most of FLW's architecture seems dated. Mies' work does not convey the dated feeling as much. When you look at the Greene and Greene Brothers whose homes are timeless after close to 100 yrs... FWL is just a novelty

-Cat

[Seeb]

I think there is an art in functionality and durability.
I have seen many of the art houses from the 60s and 70s abandoned because no one could actually live there (grew up across the river from Woodstock). And I’ve seen many buildings -houses, bars, shops still being used and looking the same after 100 plus ( some 200) years. Which is more impressive?

[Mitzi M]

Wow thanks for posting Roger Dean's link and for all the other cool links.

Some friends of mine have a home that looks a little similar to Roger's work, but instead of being built on land it was actually carved out from the land. The previous owner and builder found a small sandstone hill on the property and so he went to work carving into the soft stone. The place was semi underground with sky lights and a few small windows. There were several rooms, with wonderful arched openings, seats carved out of walls and a pedestal for the bed carved right from the hill. From the outside you could barely make out the windows and so the only real visible part was the descending stairs to the door.

My friends have another place nearby and go there to hang out on special occasions. There are challenges in terms of functionality there but you have to admit its super cool. Wish I had a photo to post.

Personally I really think a lot of architects overlook the connection to the actual land the building is going to be sitting on. That's my bent I guess, but it seems to me if a house could really just be built the same way anywhere then you're not paying attention to the land. When it does happen that the building responds to the place and the landscape is integrated you really feel it. To me anyway, it makes a huge difference in how comfortable it is to be there.

Thanks for the cool posts and interesting discussion.

[Kelena]

Gunite bubbles....iiiiiiiin the wine......

[TrevorKane]

Yeah, thanks everybody - I really like the monolithic.com domes.

The "Dean" domes are cool in that you can more or less build whatever you can imagine, through the use of the fiberglass forms. On the other hand, I'm not sure that the stage designer for a multi-platinum rock band has the same concept of "cheap" as I do. I suspect they only get truly cheap if you build a whole town of them, spreading out the cost of the forms across dozens of uses.

I've looked at American Ingenuity (Buckyball) domes off and on over the years: http://www.aidomes.com/ They use a concrete skinned foam very similar to the Castleblock walls. I'm curious what it would cost to ship a semi-truck full of these panels to Hilo from LA? Looks like it's about %5K in mileage costs to get from the factory to the west coast (not too outrageous on %40K of material) Thing about these domes is that I feel like they're more appropriate for a climate like Minnesota or Dubai - someplace where you don't like the outside. You can do multiple small dome designs, but then the cost advantage goes away.

Someone posted this link a while back: http://www.hawaiianbungalows.com/bungalows.htm - that floorplan matches my idea of an ideal "rainyside" house - H shape, 4 rooms with 3 exterior walls, "cozy" space in the middle, but still with flow-through air from end-to-end - easy to roof, cheap to build.

I'd like to see that kind of H-design done with the monolithic.com tubes - big high ceiling room in the middle and lots of exposure for the 4 rooms in the corners.

[csgray]

This link is to a beautiful ferrocement home here on the Big Island.

http://www.ferrocement.com/StassensFamil....1.en.html

Carol

[Peter Epperson]

"This link is to a beautiful ferrocement home here on the Big Island.

http://www.ferrocement.com/StassensFamil....1.en.html

Carol"

That site has an excellent link to other works http://www.ferrocement.com/catalog_Photo...g2.en.html