American founding father Thomas Jefferson reportedly adored the octagon room shape. (See my Monticello post.) Personally, I see the appeal mostly in the softening of right-angle room corners. These corners might be used instead for built-in closets or cupboards, dumb waiters or laundry chutes, or fireplaces. —Though the triangle remainder footprints wouldn't be the most practical shape for most of these applications.
In addition, four more walls in a room provide four more focal points, for windows, light, and vistas and for wall hangings. With eight focal points, a room can have the feel of a pattern, which lends a sense of calm.
Octagon houses came into vogue in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. Proponents of the octagon house appreciated that it was comparatively cheap to heat and to build. But to me, an octagonal house creates a poor floor plan, shimmed with harsh triangle rooms.
I'd much prefer another shape for rooms and houses. It may preserve many of the benefits of the octagon room and possibly of the octagon house. It would also introduce a wonderful modularity and the opportunity for iterative design and construction. I'm sure many before me have thought of it, but I'm coming up with it now myself: the honeycomb home, consisting of hexagon rooms. I like it!
This is my bit of a blog. Rambling words about rambling days. No focus and nothing ambitious. I seem to write most about local color, nature, and animals, and there is an incomplete chunk about my road trips of 2011.
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