When I was in the States this summer, I spent a week or so visiting out east. While I was in Maine with my old college roommate, he mentioned a house he knew of which sounded so fascinating I demanded that we go and visit it the next day. We called the occupants (who were acquaintances of his) and invited ourselves over; we even got dinner thrown in.
The family, whose name I don’t remember, was running an orphanage in the Bahamas but was forced to return to the States. They didn’t have a house, but a rancher in Florida donated an abandoned metal grain silo to their cause. They took it apart piece by piece, loaded it onto a flatbed and drove it north, and then reassembled it on a new foundation in a remote part of Maine. The result: a 5-story silo house. It’s about 50 feet high and 30 feet in diameter. Most of the levels were one big room, and there’s a shaft in the center for an elevator (still waiting to be installed). They even built a wood deck of sorts on the roof. The entire house was a fascinating experiment in being resourceful with very limited resources. I think my favorite touch was the red, heart-shaped hot tub in the master bath, which they picked up quite cheap from a bankrupt motel.
Check out a few more pictures
here.
2 comments:
This Silo House is interesting and shows a great deal of passion and commitment on the part of the owners. Buildings like this one lend themselves to architectural experimentation: The owners should look for future opportunities to bring more natural daylight to further express the dynamics of such a great space.
For another example of this type of vernacular, see the folling link.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/04/13/
lot-ek-shipping-container-house/
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