All you have created are new angles. Making an octagon out of a rectangle. Which reminds me...

A book by Orson Squire Fowler in 1848 sparked a brief enthusiasm in Canada and the States for octagonal houses in the 1850s for their space and energy-saving features.

Growing up, I remember a couple in our town, which originated as a utopian community known as The city of Modern Times in the scrub pine barrens of Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

But don't the rooms inside these octagonal homes have a lot of right-angled corners?

i'm not a great zoologist..but spiders, they're kinda fine with having just about anything..they just need point A and point B, and they figure out the shortest distance between the two..:) look at them in a garden for example. they have a blast there..corners or not.

Spiders are great, they love to eat mosquitoes. At least, in my neck of the woods. Rather have spiders than mosquitoes. (:

My carpenter build an all white room with all coved corners for an art installation, and the radius on the cove was big, like 12".

And there's this house.

True, spiders can go all over the place, but, at least where I've lived, tend to prefer right angles (or more acute angles) in houses. :-) Perhaps because I never put anything in the corners, so they go unused, and Spidey feels free to take up residence?

Pal, that sounds really close to what I was thinking! Except your carpenter "coved" the corners, like they swooped inward, instead of just laid flat? What a neat thing to do.

Edited to add: I actually really like the organic look of that photo above... Except, is that carpet on the ceiling?

"Do you think eliminating the corners would reduce the webs?"

No, in fact I know it.

That is a rough plaster or concrete surface of some sort.

But don't the rooms inside these octagonal homes have a lot of right-angled corners?

Some do.

Some don't.

****

Have we all forgotten Bucky Fuller and his Dymaxion??

I've seen spider webs on the flat wall. I'm pretty sure they'd simply appreciate having 2 "corners" to work with at every previous single corner.

I wouldn't do it for web control. If it makes sense for some other reason (plumbing, electrical), okay. But, not for webs.

The web thing wasn't the primary reason I was thinking about this... it's just what reminded me of a previous idea. So funny that it's what we mostly fixated on, lol.

The octagonal plan posted above still has many right and acute angles... So I'm guessing that "cornerless" is mostly what Pal posted -- that very organic, almost liquid-like look. Apparently, aside from that and the carpenter who made coves in the corners, right and acute angles aren't really inescapable....?

I hand a meeting and I asked all the spiders on my screened porch what sort of room shape they liked best. To a spider, they all said, "anything with verticals and horizontals--we'll spin webs everywhere". "After all, we're hungry!"

From the spider's mouth...

PS: I make it challenging for my spiders by using my hose and high pressure sprayer to blast off all the spider webs from the screened porch every couple of months. But they still love me and come back, hungry as ever...:-)

I didn't know you spoke spider.

This can be easily controlled by cleaning.

Of course it can be easily controlled by cleaning, lol. It also helps to have regular pest control services, of which I avail myself in each home I have. I have particularly back luck with scorpions. Don't ask. It triggers my PTSD.

I was just trying to explore other ways of thinking about corners. ;-) Clearly, I would fail Architecture School! lol

"...This can be easily controlled by cleaning..."

My spiders are running and hiding...! :-)

Having just finished my second of 3 bathrooms using coved tile at all horizontal and vertical inside corners and coved counter tops, I can say it is easier to clean those corners.

I like to cut off corners by door oening said and but the opening on the diagonal.

i first saw this in a flat in London in 1985. All the rooms off a big center hall, had their doors on the diagonal. It inspired me! As we were remodeling the entire 2nd flr at that time. I decided to use this idea. The existing bath that was to be the master needed a separate shower added to it. We borrowed some space from a neighboring closet, and to save space, we made the entrance to the bath on the diagonal, with the door opening out into the bedroom. It works brilliantly and I would do it again.

Head to the roundhouse, Nellie. He can't corner you there.

I helped a friend build a ten-sided house in Colorado many years ago. We new 54 degrees on site. As pointed out the down side is the odd shaped rooms make it hard to place furniture at times. Otherwise, it wasn't bad.

It was actually a ten-sided log cabin. Pretty cool. I wish I still had some pictures of it.

My grandparents' house in East Chicago, Indiana had rounded corners where the walls and ceilings met, on the first floor. Apparently done in the early 1930s by creative and experienced plasterers, these rounded corners endured well into the 21st century without any damage. My grandmother used to say no cobwebs ever formed there.

Apparently done in the early 1930s by creative and experienced plasterers, these rounded corners endured well into the 21st century without any damage. My grandmother used to say no cobwebs ever formed there.

That. Is. Awesome!

Thank you for reviving my thread, and for sharing this little piece of architectural history. <3 I kinda wondered if the Art Deco movement would've produced something like this (I loooove the florals of Art Deco).

Of course, I especially like the bit about the cobwebs. :-D Hypothesis support -- via real world evidence, even if anecdotal -- is always a win! lol

As an aside, I wish I could ask Miss Anglo [God rest her soul] for more information on her post; anyone else familiar with what she described?

Ahhh, "coved ceiling"... never heard the term before. Thanx, good to know. But the pix I'm seeing online aren't quite like my grandparents' ceilings, specifically, where two walls and the ceiling meet (in the "corner"), theirs was simply rounded surface, as was the two meetings of wall-to-wall and wall-to-ceiling. And yes, walls and ceilings in a given room were the same color. Surely I have a pic somewhere with these rooms I describe in the background; I'll have to dig 'em up and post 'em here.

And yes, walls and ceilings in a given room were the same color.

This is my strong preference, anyway, lol, because in the places where I've lived as an adult (Arizona & Texas), the standard practice is to texture the walls and ceiling with "knockdown," making it nearly impossible to paint a straight line without creating a tiny groove at every intersection/change of plane. :-/ Such a pain.

I also just like the look of matched ceilings and walls, so curves/coves don't pose any particular painting challenge for me, personally. :-D

Walls, cased openings, and doorways are very much appreciated, though, offering opportunities to change colors!