Barrel Living

This elliptical house in Long Island takes a different approach to eco-friendly building that is similar in many ways to the goals of yurts and dome homes but with more of an artistic and cosmological bend.

   

The 2,800-square-foot two-story space was built with the old wood from a demolished Brooklyn church and covered in corrugated fiberglass. It's based, Nova says, on an ecological idea: It's 40-by-40 in the middle and 20-by-40 at the base, "which means we are giving back half of the house to the planet."

"We like the archaic spirit and new forms of the house," he says. "Old powerful wood beams and steel ... to give you a sense of timelessness; you may be in a galleon 500 years ago, or a spaceship in the future."