“Ken Kern, author of The Owner-Built Home and The Owner-Built Homestead, is an amazing fellow and everyone interested in decentralist, back-to-the-land, rational living should know of his work. Back in 1948 he began collecting information on low-cost, simple and natural construction materials and techniques. He combed the world for ideas, tried them and started writing about his experiments.We’re excerpting chapters from The Owner-Built Home and The Owner-Built Homestead. In this chapter from Homestead, he discusses the application of concepts pioneered in free form architecture to houses.” -Mother Earth News
“There is a great deal about the free-form house that is applicable to owner-builder construction. This type of building is not mere freeflow art form or a return to nature, but, as Kiesler states, “it derives from living a life dedicated to fundamentals rather than to mechanized equipment and interior decoration.”
Designers of free-form houses feel that there should be a greater independence from our constantly increasing automated way of life. By way of architecture they seek to encourage a more natural way of living. Kiesler talks of basing his house on simple, healthful, and direct ways of living, where work can also be recreational.
There is continuity of structure in a curving free-form building which makes it more desirable than straight-line types. Conventional structure is put together from separate, articulated pieces, whereas free-form is composed of simple, continuous materials; angles break the flow of the eye but curves lead smoothly from one surface to another.”
More at the source: Mother Earth News
Image source of completed house: Volcania Files.com
I love the natural stone look. The floorplan is very unusual though.