Round house/glass house: JH Esmond Dorney at Porter Hill, Hobart

Throughout the mid-twentieth century Modernist ideals influenced residential design in many ways. In particular, experiments with geometry changed the form and function of the domestic dwelling, and this included an interest in polygonal buildings of different types. In the late 1920s Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen and Buckminster Fuller all experimented with round houses. After the Second World War Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff and John Lautner, as well as lesser-known architects Raymond McGrath, Daniel Liebermann and Don Erickson, also designed round houses in England and the United States. Philip Goad suggests that these projects demarcate a humanist expansion of the Modernist domestic project, with the evolution of organic principles alongside the traditional functionalist principles producing varied domestic outcomes.