When Ms W was about nine her class at school was set the task of designing and making a miniature house. It was one of those topics that spread across many school subjects.
Most of her class came up with perfectly reasonable everyday sort of designs based on their own homes. Ms W and another child came up with things which were quite different. The other child designed a house for living on Mars. (Her father is a physicist.) It was good. There were features for temperature control, growing food indoors and much more.
And Ms W designed "a house like a mushroom but without the stalk". I remember her coming to me and saying what she wanted to do. She was quite anxious about it. "I have to do it like that but I don't know how to make it all round and it has to be the right sort of round," she told me. She drew me a picture of what she wanted. She showed it to her father as well. He suggested using a ball, an idea she wasn't that happy with but was prepared to go along with if she couldn't think of anything else.
At that point the Senior Cat stepped in and suggested a balloon and papier mache. Yes! She was off and away for the outside of the house and thinking about the inside of the house as she did it. There were problems of course. Ms W discovered that designing for circular was not as simple as designing for square or rectangular but she persisted. It helped that she had made a house out of a shoe box and knew something about "little things". The Senior Cat showed her a book of doll house designs he had. It had miniature furniture and so on. For the next three weeks Ms W worked on it in all her spare time. The end result was very, very good. Her work, along with that of the Martian house, was displayed with pride on the school's Open Day.
I was disappointed when Ms W admitted she eventually put it into the rubbish. She has made more houses since then as well as other structures - there is a miniature library filled with tiny books, a bakery with tiny loaves, a florist with tiny origami flowers. They have been given to her friends as birthday presents. All of them have been more conventional shapes.
I asked her over the weekend whether she had considered making another dome shaped structure. She shook her head but then said, "I still think it is a good idea. I'd have to find out a lot but if it's because of the cyclone then I thought about that and a house that shape would be better in a cyclone. Maybe you could have a square sort of shape inside the round part."
I wonder about this too. Would dome shaped houses be a better protection in areas prone to cyclones and hurricanes? If so, why don't people build them? Is it really that difficult to do? I can understand that it is much more difficult to build curved kitchen units but a "square sort of shape inside the round part" is surely possible - or is it much too expensive?
Ms W's father phoned me about something else yesterday and said she had gone on thinking about it. "I suggested she might think about architecture as a career and got told there was too much maths and engineering involved."
And yes, Ms W has other career ideas now. It's a pity. I would rather like her to design me a cosy little house like a mushroom without the stalk.
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4 comments:
I wondered about dome shapes being good for cyclone conditions recently, too. However, if it is such a good idea, you would expect somewhere in cyclone country to have tried It and, had it been a successful idea, it would have become more popular. I also wondered if a round structure (where it meets the earth) would be better than a rectangular building for flood waters to wash around. Perhaps a few papier-mâché-mâché models and some running water are needed for further testing.
LMcC
I can't help thinking of the Iron Age in this part of the world, when houses were round. And the archaeologists can tell when the Roman influence began in any one place, since the houses acquired corners. If only we could go back and ask some of the people who experienced the change what the practical difficulties and advantages were.
Perhaps furniture has something to do with it? Is it easier to build rectangular furniture than round? (Cut a horizontal slab from a tree and add legs to make a stool or table...seems easier than cutting to rectangular shape.) To store rectangular furniture Inside rectangular buildings? There must be a book about the development of furniture and buildings.
LMcC
You might get to look at the following -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must_Farm_Bronze_Age_settlement
This settlement burned and has now been found with everything for daily living in its place, so that the diggers can see how the space of the houses was used. Of course, there was very little in the way of what we would regard as furniture, so the roundness was not such a disadvantage.
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