The Roundhouse
via Roundhouse
Forbes: Eli Attia’s creation is what he calls the Roundhouse, a modular window-wrapped structure that’s supposed to make up for the bad name prefab housing has gotten over the years. “Enough of this nonsense of building homes the way we did 100 years ago,” Attia says, disgustedly motioning at the bloated homes in the canyon below the Roundhouse site. “It’s all a waste.”
A Roundhouse, they calculate, delivers 150% more square feet of floor space per unit of exterior wall than a traditional home does. Yikes, how is that possible? Take a basic 40-foot-by-25-foot layout in a boxy 2,000-square-foot two-story home. Going from a rectangular to a circular floor while keeping the perimeter fixed adds only 34% to the space. Their comparison, it turns out, was based on a nearby Mediterranean-style home with many nooks and crannies that a simple rectangle doesn’t have.
Roundhouses will have a flat garden roof that can incorporate a deck. The plants and dirt will capture rainfall and shield the house from heat, rather than absorbing it like an asphalt shingle or a clay tile. That might save a bit on air-conditioning bills.
Environmentalists will be thrilled that the Roundhouse’s frame will consist not of old-growth Douglas fir but of recycled steel. The windows and steel will fit together as a 64-sided polygon; the house isn’t exactly round, but it looks round from a distance. The Attias say the exterior of the house can be assembled by a seasoned crew in a week. Total construction time, from foundation to wall paint, should be under two months.
