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Those are awful. I pass them on my way to work every day. I witnessed their shoddy construction and will witness their accelerated decay.
Those roofs will leak like crazy in the valleys and the use of cheap shingles will only hasten that leaking.

I agree with austinjohn, this design is a nightmare, funneling water for serious leaks.

i have yet to see these in action yet (are they new?), but i don't think they're awful. maybe the construction is awful, but i still love the idea (and the east side! juan in a millions...sigh)

if they're made poorly, though, but you loved the idea and the design, could you fix that sort of thing yourself? i mean, of course you could, but just because they're made poorly doesn't mean they should be shunned...it's like having the skeleton of the design, and you just fix it up. not many people have the option of splurging on their own custom-built homes.

These are very poorly executed - They're not even curved properly - just a bunch of flat planes at angles to one another.

...and the houses themselves are cheap stucco crackerboxes - No thanks.

I'm with thekatieway on this, just because something is not well made does not mean it's not viable. Most of today's building is cheap and shoddy, even the McMansions, if these were built to a high standard I think they would be great. Much better than the cookie cutter little boxes that are being built today and called houses. JMO

Bobbin:
I agree. I refuse to even look at new houses in my housing hunt, since the ones in my price range are so poorly made. I'd rather buy a horribly cheap, older, fixer-upper, than a less than par new home.

I agree that design is the focus here, not necessary the shoddy building materials. Design is better than most of the cookie cutters I've seen.

If they weren't connected, maybe the "water flow" issue would fix itself. If seperate buildings, I could see them being cute little cabins at a state park. :)

Well-built curved roofs are lovely, I've seen some in Seattle, using corrugated metal; design needs to always take into account "where will the water go"... That said, I'd love to have a curved roof on my new porch, (we are putting a roof over the little 8 x 10 "deck" next to our front door), but it would make the cost of building completely unrealistic. It is very difficult to do unusual things well with stock building materials.

By the way, I am open to innovation and have seen some fantastic curved roofs. However, the overall form of the house in question, which contains about ten bays of curved roof that terminate in valleys with no defined drainage outlet is a recipe for disaster. Look closely at the pictures, all of the materials used are cheap. While we have not had significant rainfall for about six months here in Austin, when it rains, it pours. When six inches of rain falls on that roof in an hour and spills down the fake stucco wall in torrents, the walls and foundation will get undermined.
It is no wonder that the two attached units have been for sale for the entire year and are still empty.

I cringe when i think of the water stained ceilings in these houses.

What were they thinking?