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Comment by Jiro | Hacker News Reader

Furniture is rectangular with corners. Boxes are rectangular shaped. Windows that are rectangular can slide in ways that circular windows cannot. Look at the picture in the article showing a couch and chair at angles to one another.

This is a stupid idea.

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But its good to try something different, at least once, somewhere in the world? People live in yurts, and they are circular. Perhaps it was good to explore the idea that living spaces didn't need to be rectangles. Perhaps it feels different? Perhaps living in a space that doesn't easily fit rectangular furniture would lead to some new insights?

Cylinders and cones (and thus yurts) do have advantages. Spheres don’t. They are much more difficult to construct, and are unstable on a flat surface.

If we a giving credit for whimsy, full marks for the sphere houses. But scoring as a place to live? Failure.

Spheres minimize surface area per unit of volume. As heat loss in a building is proportional to its exposed surface area, this means they're potentially very thermally efficient. (Less good for collecting sunlight if you're going to cover them in PV panels, though.)

This is a great argument, except that the extra space that makes the building so efficient compared to a cube, is space that mostly can't be used.

Yurts typically do not have furniture of the kind one would have in a fixed home.

And even very primitive fixed huts are typically rectangular.

My kitchen table is not rectangular. My bathroom sink is not rectangular. My chest of drawers is not rectangular. Who cares what shape boxes are? Balloons are egg-shaped, or round or rectangular. Pipes tend to be cylindrical. Light bulbs have various shapes. What does that have to do with the shape of houses?

I have seen many curved walls with curved furniture fitted to the wall. I have seen many non-rectangular windows.

Relax. Different is not always stupid. Without different, progress is impossible.

Different is not always stupid, but sometimes it is. To my reading the article offered not a single advantage these homes had compared to alternatives.

Then you didn't read very well. They have inspired tourism in a way unmatched by any surrounding houses. Are there websites dedicated to your rectangular house?

I hope they inspired some among a generation of children who grew up there to think bravely.

> They have inspired tourism in a way unmatched by any surrounding houses.

lol you are joking right.

I'm pretty sure OP was arguing from the point of view of the inhabitants of the houses. Living in an oddity for the sake of its odness is not a boon.

Better is different (by definition), but different is worse, so better is worse.

I see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vidzkYnaf6Y

Even ignoring all existing human objects, circles don’t tile. It’s fundamentally impossible to efficiently pack solids this way.

People don't tile well either. Perhaps there's an advantage to unused space

People tile well in a circular tent. Fire in the middle, people lying around feet towards the fire, upper bodies and heads out. But almost nobody lives like that anymore.

Rhombic dodecahedral might be a better choice.

I think non-tiling isn't always a bad feature! For example, you can use the spaces for ventilation (If we're imagining houses with non-tiling shapes) and light to shine through. Strictly you can always find complementary shapes to make non-single tiling tiles of course.

But you can do the same in a space that does tile. You can simply choose to not fill some tiles.

Humans are not rectangular.

They sit, shift, slouch, and more, into all kinds of non-linear, non-rectangular, and even non-polygonal positions.

Just had a live example of this last night at an impromptu music event that suddenly manifested at a cafe where I happened to be sitting.

Yep. It would make sense only if these were to be anchored below sea level or somewhere beyond the stratosphere, else it’s not space efficient.

Sure, spheres acting as a pressure vessel make 100% sense.

Even conceding they may be the only sensible choice for that environment - they are still not space efficient.

You can make rounded furniture. I actually have a quarter circle couch in front of the fire place. it's nice.

Round furniture being nice =/= round rooms being nice.

And a round room might be a cylinder with a flat curved edge at least. A spherical room/wall is the absolute worst use of space case possible.

Round furniture exists too, like the fabled round table. Curved windows could totally slide along a spherical surface.

yet sound waves are spherical. (oops)

It's modernism, a mental disability that because something looks futuristic, it must be better. One of the main symptoms is an obsession with measurement; a ball maximizes volume to surface, and because that number is more than another number, therefore it is better. Other symptoms of the condition are a complete lack of imagination; a near physical inability to imagine a thing or conjure an experience in your minds eye without it existing. Patients tend to eventually suffer from complete mental sclerosis. It's been an endemic illness since at least the 20th century.

Add to that a complete lack of empathy with regards to the people who will be supposed to live or work in the building. (the only people left living in the sphere homes are students and a few other young people with low income) This is why modernism is seen by some as related to narcissism and psychopathy.

To be fair, the architect did live in one of these homes.

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