This is 10′ by 10′. Rafters made of four 1″ by 4″ by ⅜″ redwood bender board, 16′ long, bent, glued and clamped together. Roof sheathing is 1 × 6 redwood fence boards from Home Depot. Siding is ⅜″ rough-sawn exterior DF plywood. Eventually I’ll panel the inside with used fence boards. Flooring is used yellow pine T&G from Heritage Salvage in Petaluma. Windows (used) from Urban Ore in Berkeley.

Billy Cummings has done most of the work here, including cutting and fitting double-wall polycarbonate greenhouse glazing under the curved eaves.

Next step is to build a sliding door for one half of the end wall shown here so a bed can be rolled out onto the deck for nighttime star gazing. Jay Nelson built a sliding door for his shop that gave me the idea.

Note: A curved roof is infinitely more time-consuming (In many ways) as compared with, say, a shed roof or a gable roof. BUT the space underneath is wonderful and something I highly recommend for tiny homes. If you take the time to build a roof like this, it will give you a feeling of spaciousness and avoid the claustrophobia of small spaces. Curved roofs are the secret to the good feeling in Gypsy wagons (vardos).

Hey, I’m starting to get the hang of doing layout in WordPress — a lot more options than Blogger.

This was on a surfing trip to the Osa Peninsula, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, in 2004. I have a lot of photos of traditional and innovative bamboo structures.

So much “content,” so little time…

From our book now in production:
Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture On the California Coast
Beach sculpture by Bob Demmerle

Too bad that the hundreds of houses at the coastal development Sea Ranch, which were supposed to be modeled on local farm buildings such as this one, turned out to be so sterile. The one part of Sea Ranch design that did work, was the landscaping by landscape designer Lawrence Halprin; he basically left the natural vegetation as is.