Professor-turned-farmer's Circular Home perches over ideal live-work homestead

so many there one this yeah there was actually one seriously still Hing no oh he has trees looks like mangoes wow side nice wow Mitch yeah hi good to meet you finally so how do you find the door does it lock it does wow that's great yeah just a big piece of glass yes as the architect said after the house was built I asked you forgot I asked where the handle was and Craig said a door without a handle is Art so but anyway it's not the mo if it was brighter you could see better but the idea is you just see straight out to the coastline one of the very few directions I gave the architect was that we had to have an Atrium because I saw his other house that he built and I told Craig if I ever lived in that house I would spend all my time in the atrium so he built this house around the atrium which is a square and then you have the circle of the house and then you have the triangle which also looks like a d fin surfboard fin which is the office upstairs if you want to picture with the cat you have to do it right this okay okay there she goes she's going to go to the [Laughter] left I see it where is she went to the right she's coming she's going to go outside now and the idea here is to really maximize The View so this is um K laua Bay down there is two-step Beach so we can always see how the water is chopping at the beach and these are papaya trees here these these tall ones are papaya trees so sort of the light green is papaya and the other is U mango we sell our fruit through the local grocery stores here there's a lot of small farms we we have six acres here and it's you know it's not everyone's a farmer here there's people who just live here yeah yeah you don't have to be a farmer but you chose to yeah no because I mean first of all you got the land why put it to waste okay and there is a huge issue on the is only 10% of our food is local 90% of the food is either flown in or or boated in okay and so there's a real issue about getting more sustainability on island so in here you really see how how round the house is right I'm curious why round why is that for two reasons one is just to maximize the view just to not have coroners interfere with enjoying this panoramic view and I think secondly it was a novelty it was something different this is farming country and so most of the people who engage an architect I wouldn't call them cookie cutter but they're pretty they're traditional but most people don't build like this but most people don't build like this it was a lot of experimentation there's there's no walls there's no 90° angles to sort of interrupt that feeling of openness that really does contribute to the sense of openness and and so the circle the round nature of the house is not just a novelty it's really got a function it's just even if you're here like there's just no walls in this part right so you're just seeing yeah you know it's not a big house but you get a sense of a more Grandeur by the openness of it and the same thing if you come in the bedroom so this is what I wake up to in the morning this room does feel almost like you're in an IMAX movie right I mean I've never been to an iMac so I can't speak to that but this is really the color is just vibrant yeah it's a great way to wake up wow Sun's starting to set now one of the things that I didn't expect but totally love just this Skylight and the mirror it's just really lovely and it just brightens up the whole place now this is lava I was just going to ask it looks like it this is lava yeah wow and this and the wall and everything too right yes this is all lava Sounds here I'm noticing how different sounds are I you feel like you're in it right you it's wonderful there's roosters all over this island and there's Cokey frogs I see it and it's amazing I'm a very light sleeper and I they don't bother me at all because it becomes part of the rap city and I think one of my favorite Sounds here is when the rain comes I love it when the rain it's funny growing up in California where it didn't rain too much it was always a hassle so when I was a kid growing up rain was something we dreaded but here we love it it's just soothing it makes our work on the farm easier because we have to water less when it rains we love the rain this is the one thing that I shipped over from the mainland the bathtub I found it on Craigslist in San Francisco it's great but it's a great place to take a bath so instead of people do outdoor showers but you have an outdoor bathtub well we have an outdoor shower also oh you do you've got to have an outdoor shower in Hawaii well it's raining here so I don't know if you want but this right around the banner oh yeah okay oh yeah we can go up to the office here okay yeah wow so that's the pool oh you're right in the jungle almost oh this was all overgrown we cut down a lot of just wild this place hadn't been touched really since 19 the 1930s we cut a lot it was just thick this is a subdivision from an old coffee Farm it was last farmed in 1930 and it had not been tended to for decades this is the view that well this is the office this is where the work office can you concentrate I don't do all my work up here but it's you know it's a great way to take a break and just take a look it's so interesting because it's a sliver of of you here yeah and then the other side it's like funneling your view or yeah it is that sense of kind of funneling the light and the energy also to you know while that side of the house looks at the bay you know I I just sometimes will get lost in in enjoying these beautiful trees and look at this you got that fur you got bamboo these are Palms of course and you get a sense really that you're have this curtain of of vegetation that is protective it's like a cushion from between the farm and the rest of the world so it's like a cushion you don't fence yourself off from the exterior so you hear things like right now that's a Koke frog that's it's this is a little early they usually come out at night but that chirping sound K that's why they call it k k you can hear them they're they're starting to come out yeah no it is like you do I mean and I think that's again to why he designed a roundhouse is he wanted that permeability the Confluence with the nature you know just to not feel apart from it the idea is that this is not a structure that's apart from the land it's a structure that is with the land if you look from the front of the house it's on pillars and it's it's not stuck in the ground it's like floating above the ground that helps with the openness also it gives you a sense of really being with it being in nature and in the country and which is a good thing because it's so beautiful here this is the Lai it's not a very large one but I've been to places here in Hawaii where the Leni probably is more more square feet than the house itself and people live there they they cook they have a hot plate out there they have a washing machine out there so I'm noticing more and more the roof it's probably going towards Some central point so yes these beams certainly accentuate that and you can see this beam goes outside the round nature of the house is not just a novelty it's really got a function and I think that's something that was important to me this is not a vacation home this is some place where I'm going to be living so I want it to be very functional it's not a huge house so you just have the kitchen the island and the table you know and it I I like the sort of the you know you can tell see some of this is already oxidizing and I think this goes well with it being a farm so you get sort of a sense of a modern kitchen but it's got these little rustic touches and so that's some and there's some very cool touches that you know this cute little thing here that's kind of but there's no distractions I there's nothing to distract the eye from what's outside right right but you get that sense of more grander than than the actual square footage because of of just the openness of it so let's go up by the pool let's do that yeah you know I have a black thumb but but look I give all the credit to the soil and to P the the goddess of the volcanoes she's blessed me and her her contribution does not go unnoticed wa the geometry of this is really cool yeah so you now you add a rectangle to the triangle the square and the circle I sometimes when I'm doing laps wonder why did I make it so long so that's what is it's a lot it's functional it's functional everything that's the key you got you got right it's functional frogs are coming up it's really great I can't even think of what this shape is it feels familiar somehow like some sort of math problem I don't know maybe it's one of those aptitude tests where you had to look at something from a different side which of you know a and then one two or three they have the same Cube but they twist it and you have to I maybe that it I don't know I didn't Fair too well on those tests I don't [Applause] think so here's the out here's the requisite Hawaiian outdoor shower this is the time of day if I take a bath I will take it now it's just you can hear the roosters this is such a great time of day to take a bath and just lie here and just relax oh wow so you just try to get outside when you can I mean obviously you put the bathtub outside you're there that's important well yeah I mean and and also on a very practical level I try to avoid being out in the middle of the day because you know Sun cancer stuff I mean you're Outdoors a lot here yeah and so I try and do my work on the Farm early morning and late afternoon you can see some these are Big mango trees and then that's my personal Garden we have chard kale I grow the best arugula we're going down to the farm so it's a long horizontal piece of land so these are papaya tree these tall kind of Dr sus yeah I like they're this is a Grove of C this is Kaa coffee these are all coffee trees we just got done picking you I don't know if any of these have any red beans on them or not but these were planted just 3 years ago and look how big they are this is just a Grove it's about 300 trees in there we have 300 here we have another 100 and we expect to get 2,000 lbs of coffee wow yeah oh wow great after three years that's impressive yeah it's very impressive yeah yeah so this is where we Dro coffee so this is a coffee bean we've picked it we've poped it which means the outer skin comes off okay and now we have to dry it because moisture has to come before you can roast it we've got a machine that measures the moisture this is over here is our cacao we just did a lot of I don't know can you see the red pods in there see them okay so here's a baby one yeah these are these are the pods so when you eat a chocolate candy bar there's beans inside here and it's very mucousy if you open this up scoop out the beans and again like the coffee you dry it and then you roast it but and then what you do depends on a lot of people make candy bars we don't really want to make candy bars it's just not our thing I mean I love candy but I'm not a big sugar guy so we're thinking about selling caca powder and there's and the plan is to start selling this to chefs at high-end restaurants so they can put on the menu you know like mahi mahi and crusted in Kona cacao something like that love it the cona name huh yeah the cona name oh you can see up there those are a bunch of little papayas do you see them just oh yeah yeah so those are papayas these are our Meer lemons this is our latest clutch of chickens we have to keep them in the coupe because mongooses will attack them if they're too small so while we're walking to the next part of the farm I'll tell you the story of monges so there's a big rat problem on the island and so hundreds of I don't know when 1800s some fellow had a idea let's bring mongus over to kill to eradicate the rats so they brought Mongo's over the problem is rats come out at night and M gooses go to bed at night and there's no natural predator of the Mongoose on the island so we have a huge infest station of is and and we can't let the the chickens out until they attain a certain size otherwise the mongooses will get them Aloha this is landero hello aloha this now this is a typical laai I was telling you the laai this is a subdivision from an old coffee Farm and the soil is amazing they come over here quickly do you see the avocados look at these so this is our mango Grove this was here on the farm this mango tree okay and you see we have to top it because we can't reach up that high so we give it a flat top these are pineapples then we have more coffee down there more coffee okay oh here we go yeah go that's going to grow a little bit more but it survived the Harvest it's just amazing how abundant we'll plant little seedlings and they'll say you'll get fruit in 3 to 5 years and we got the fruit in two years it's just the volcanic soil and it's the goddess P who is the goddess of the volcano this is the coffee now these are not these are green they're not ready to pick yet but this will turn red but like I said we we take the raw bean and then we pulp it and we dry it but we we don't roast it ourselves yet look at this grand old avocado tree it's been here before I was coconut yeah it is it does require a lot of work because there's so many pets s there was something called coffee leaf rust which rusted the leaves as coffee was wiped out I I sold all my coffee last year to a guy who has a coffee house here this entire crop was was wiped out this is a big issue for the island it's a very expensive place to live unfortunately a lot of people can't afford some of the prod and and and and coming from California this is crazy you know I used to go to the store and buy a green pepper for 9 and it's $4.99 here but I also feel good in that we're helping slowly do more farming and growing of food on the [Music] island do you think that around home makes sense now that you've lived in one oh yeah the the openness of it absolutely it you you aren't confined by angles and there is a very much an openness and it just makes the whole place flow and more and I think that contributes to the indoor outdoor feeling now you hear the frogs when I started coming here building the house I stayed with some friends and what did I hear kokei frogs and roosters and I said oh my gosh I don't know if I could live on this island but you just you adapt it's amazing you adapt to it and it's it's just a Harmony it's it's not a nuisance at all now I used to have a problem with chickens coming in the house and the way I would know that a chicken was in the house is I would be in the other room and I would hear but that's part of the fun on the farm it's you know Live and Let Live so I I'm just blessed to be here [Music] [Music] for

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 248,930

Keywords: dream home, hawaii dream home, roundhouse, circular house, shark fin house, working farm, dream house with farm, agrarian dream house, craig steely, glass round house, kona coffee farm, mango farm, cacao farm, outdoor bathtub, glass bedroom, lava flow house, geometric home

Id: EKxNFERakO0

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024