Within the a long time after the Sec­ond World Warfare, many coun­tries confronted the chal­lenge of rebuild­ing their hous­ing and infra­struc­ture whereas additionally hav­ing to accom­mo­date a fast-arriv­ing child increase. The gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands bought extra cre­ative than most, placing mon­ey towards exper­i­males­tal hous­ing tasks begin­ing within the late 9­teen-six­ties. Hop­ing to hap­pen upon the subsequent rev­o­lu­tion­ary type of dwelling, it finish­ed up fund­ing designs that, for essentially the most half, strayed none too removed from estab­lished pat­terns. Nonetheless, there have been gen­uine out­liers: by far essentially the most dar­ing professional­pos­al got here from artist and sculp­tor Dries Kreijkamp: to construct a complete neigh­bor­hood out of Bol­wonin­gen, or “ball hous­es.”

The concept could recall to mind Buck­min­ster Fuller’s geo­des­ic domes, which loved a level of utopi­an vogue within the 9­teen-six­ties and sev­en­ties. Like Fuller and most oth­er imaginative and prescient­ar­ies, Kreijkamp labored below a cer­tain mono­ma­nia. His needed to do with globes, “essentially the most organ­ic and nat­ur­al form pos­si­ble. In any case, spherical­ness is each­the place: we dwell on a globe, and we’re born from a globe. The globe com­bines the largest pos­si­ble vol­ume with the small­est pos­si­ble sur­face space, so that you want min­i­mum mate­r­i­al for it.” The 50 Bol­wonin­gen inbuilt ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, wager­ter often known as Den Bosch, have been fast­ly fab­ri­cat­ed on-site out of glass fiber rein­pressured con­crete. It was­n’t the poly­ester Kreijkamp had at first spec­i­fied, however then, poly­ester would­n’t have final­ed 40 years.

Since they have been put up in 1984, the Bol­wonin­gen have been con­tin­u­ous­ly inhab­it­ed. In the video at the top of the post, Youtu­ber Tom Scott pays a vis­it to certainly one of them, whose occu­pant appears rea­son­ably sat­is­fied. (It appears they’re “cozy” within the win­ter­time.)

Like geo­des­ic domes, their spherical partitions make it dif­fi­cult to make use of their the­o­ret­i­cal­ly gen­er­ous inte­ri­or area effi­cient­ly, at the least with­out com­mis­sion­ing cus­tom-made fur­ni­ture; leak­ing win­dows are additionally a peren­ni­al prob­lem. Whereas every Bol­gained­ing can com­fort­ably home one and even two sim­ple-liv­ing peo­ple, solely essentially the most utopia-mind­ed would try to boost a fam­i­ly in certainly one of them. As with oth­er spherical or cir­cu­lar dwelling designs, expan­sion could be phys­i­cal­ly imprac­ti­cal even when it have been authorized­ly pos­si­ble.

Used as social hous­ing by the native gov­ern­ment, the Bol­wonin­gen now take pleasure in a professional­tect­ed his­toric sta­tus. (As nicely they may, giv­en their con­nec­tion with the artwork and indus­attempt of Dutch glass­blow­ing: it was whereas work­ing in a glass fac­to­ry that Kreijkamp first started professionals­e­ly­tiz­ing for spheres.) And in contrast to most aes­thet­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal hous­ing devel­op­ments, they haven’t gone to seed, however reasonably acquired the nec­es­sary most important­te­nance over the a long time. The result’s an enchantment­ing neigh­bor­hood for these whose life are swimsuit­ed to its unusu­al struc­tures and its con­tained bucol­ic set­ting, of which you may get an concept in the walk­ing video tour just above. By the point Kreijkamp died in 2014, he per­haps felt a cer­tain diploma of remorse that mass-pro­duced glob­u­lar houses did­n’t show to be the subsequent large factor. However he did dwell to see the emer­gence of the “tiny home” transfer­ment, which ought to retroac­tive­ly undertake him as certainly one of its lead­ing lights.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

Denmark’s Utopi­an Gar­den City Built Entire­ly in Cir­cles: See Astound­ing Aer­i­al Views of Brønd­by Have­by

Good­bye to the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopi­an Apart­ment Build­ing

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

The Engi­neer­ing of the Strand­beest: How the Mag­nif­i­cent Mechan­i­cal Crea­tures Have Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly Evolved

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.