Spherical houses weren't a great idea.

Thanks to Jeroen for letting us film inside his home: and please remember, if you're ever nearby, that these are homes and not a tourist attraction!

Imagine Tom Scott just randomly showing up at your house and he starts explaining it

The architects dream is the engineers nightmare, but once in a while the artists win

"Humans were not meant to live in a box." Proceeds to build human hamster wheels

Now that I’m older I see that stairs are increasingly problematic. Having to go up and down multiple odd-shaped stairs to go from room to room would be a problem.

These are houses from a future. Not THE future, just A future.

The designers certainly had balls to put them forward as a design. Edit: I am very pleased with the puns and jokes I've inspired here, complete with pun-ctuation.

Several cultures used to have round houses, but they have a fatal flaw. If you need to expand the house for some reason, it too much of a hassle with round shapes... while with a square house it is simple to build another square besides it and put a door between the two...

I could have rented one, when they were build, but saw a few problems an apartment next to it didn't have. - stepping out the front door you are 'on the street'. No balcony, no garden, no bicycle shed. - in the upper dome (living/kitchen) the area with full standing height is small, floor goes on four feet but you have your head against the dome. It's simply too small. And much inside is just the stairs. - they were in a public park, nosy and curious people walking around day and night. Trees were as thick as my middle finger back than, so no privacy at all. So I rented the apartment with view on these spheres, and never regretted it. Inhabitants slowly claimed a 'little sitting outside area' and some garden around the base. Much later they got a shed after a much needed renovation (leaking windows, mold on the inside, algae on the outside).

One wonders if the sense of neighbourliness that's mentioned is partly fostered by the fact the houses are so weirdly difficult to live in: if you've just moved into a spherical neighbourhood, you probably have a bunch of issues and questions and even in the age of instant online searches, your neighbours are still going to be the only real place you can get answers.

I remember my dad talking about this idea as a kid, his biggest confusion was furniture. You’d have to either waste space or buy only curved appliances. Unless you want your kitchen in the middle of the house. Moral of the story: If you couldn’t get people to buy this in the 90s, nobody will.

I always admired the Dutch for their eagerness to experiment with architecture, city planning and organizing traffic. They came up with some very interesting, innovative and well performing solutions. In these regards the Netherlands are a role model. Although there are also some quirky things like spherical houses: If you don't give unconventional ideas a chance then you'll never make progress.

Love that you included the local term "bolbewoner". Fun fact: this term is a pun on the word "holbewoner" which is dutch for caveman.

Architect: Humans were not meant to live in a box, they shall live in spheres. Humans: I have claustrophobia

I don't have a round house but i have a semi-cylindrical bedroom and while it's harder to furnish, I still love it. There's something about the softening effect the shape gives to the space that makes it feel cosy

“Even if you measure, it’s no guarantee things fit” I’m going to use this regularly in life now. Thanks, guy

It's charming how one would expect the lasting appeal of these homes to be all about their uniqueness, but in truth some of the appeal comes down to very mundane reasons such as "it's near the shops" and "the community is nice."

This gives a whole new meaning to the term 'housing bubble'.

The neat thing is that spheres have the largest volume to surface area ratio possible of any shape, so I’m not surprised at how warm it is inside.

I grew up in this neighborhood and it's so great to see these houses getting international attention. Also, Jeroen is right: It is a great and friendly neighborhood with everything nearby. It was truly a blast to grow up here as a child.