Round Shaped Structures for a Square Minded Culture

A few years ago, an architecture student told me it’s very frustrating to finish university and get flushed to the real world with all those innovative ideas, only to be faced with the harsh reality and discover people insist on living in simple rectangle shaped houses with boring square rooms. A few years after replying him with “it’s only natural” I want to recall my statement. Snowflakes and hive chambers are hexagons, dew drops and sea urchins are round, planets and moons dance in elliptic orbits. Four sided polygons are not natural!

It is just recently that architecture began to fight back at us square minded civilization, imitating nature and inspired by art. This concert hall being built in my home town Rechovot by Haim Dotan Architects, was inspired by this painting of a flower. The same firm also designed this academic campus you see in the picture with these pebble shaped buildings - so beautiful! Some guys go to college just for the girls; some guys go there just for the buildings.

If we want to make the shift toward round or elliptic houses, some adjustments are in order. We are going to need some round back furniture, elliptic carpets etc. It is obviously not as easy as manufacturing stuff for rectangle shaped spaces, but I think a few world-wide industry standard radiuses can do the job. I foresee that in a few decades we’ll get fully accustomed to round buildings and all these straight angles will feel like a key scratch on a Ferrari.

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p.s. The black piano keys sit above the white ones; is this a case of positive discrimination?