Virginia Round House Retreat

The couple decided to go with Deltec. They chose a one-story model from Deltec's 360° Collection. Deltec completed the home in 2016. The couple has since fallen in love with home's treehouse-like feel (the homeowner says that, as a child, she always wanted a treehouse). "We love our round house," she adds. "It is cozy and comfortable, and nothing in nature is square or rectangular, so we feel we blend right into our clearing in the woods."

Early Dwellings, Futuristic Visions  

From the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, the Celts constructed circular homes from wood posts and wattle (woven wood) and daub (straw and mud). They fabricated roofs from thatched straw or heather. The palloza, built by the Astur tribes, is found in El Bierzo, El Bierz, and the south-west of Asturias. Circular or oval, with the conical roof falling close to the ground, the structure is stone. The roof is rye straw on a wood frame.

The nomadic Native tribes of North America's Great Plains constructed teepees (tipis). They tied long poles together at the top and spread them out at the bottom to make an upside-down cone, then covered the shape with buffalo hide. The Scythians, another a nomadic nation that moved about on horseback, constructed yurts in the northern Black Sea and Central Asian region from around B.C. 600 to 300 A.D. Bronze Age rock etchings in Siberia also depict yurt dwellings. The Mongolian Huns also lived in yurts from about the 4th to 6th century A.D.

In 1930, inventor Buckminster Fuller introduced his Dymaxion House, a circular metal home built in a factory as a kit, then assembled on site. When asked why he designed a circular house, he replied: "Why not?" An abundance of natural resources and building materials, he added, helped drive the trend toward square and rectangular houses. "Moderne" materials and technologies, and the streamlined shapes in fashion, could be applied to houses "with the same efficiency of engineering that we apply to suspension bridges and airplanes…" 

Many more examples of round homes, ancient and futuristic, exist. Today, they're gaining traction again as an inherently sustainable alternative to the traditionally shaped home—particularly when equipped with solar panels for electrical power, when sited for maximum heat gain in winter and shading in summer, and completed with low-VOC finishes and recycled materials.  

The Well-Rounded Life 

Another Deltec homeowner chose a circular home because he'd always wanted to live in a treehouse (a popular sentiment), and wanted a circular dance floor, as he and his partner love ballroom dancing. The Mandala Custom Home, also a prefab option incorporating performance-based building technologies, can be fortified to withstand hurricanes, heavy snow loads, and earthquakes—and clad in fire-resistant materials.

What homeowners love most, really, about their round homes are the views the curved window walls bring inside and the sense of being outside that the circular shape creates. As a Mandala homeowner said, "I could never imagine living in a rectangular house again…" With lake views through her multiple windows, and birds and wildlife passing by, "our view is like looking at a living painting."