I get bored occasionally, or I’m on hold waiting on a client and have a few minutes to fill, so I do internet searches. Today I did a search on thin shelled structures and found some VERY interesting things.
This site has a catalog of fascinating ferrocement and other thin shelled structures. I’ve started from the bottom up and while there are a number of structures I find very appealing, so far two have captured my imagination.
In England at the Weald and Downland Museum is a green oak building that is a serious piece of craftsmanship. It is a marvelous blend of old and new technology. The use of scaffolding and the grid construction process is very interesting. Follow the construction link on the site to read through the process.
This structure (go look at the image at the link, it’s awesome) 
is truly a thing of beauty as well as being a serious work of craftsmanship. Here’s a picture of the inside. Isn’t that beautiful? I can see this done in ferrocement. Awesome. This is definately an mxSteve type building, on steroids. What an elegant shape!
I’ve got a friend who’s a whiz at math (masters level) and I’ve asked her to check my figures on my wall dimensions for the inset portions of my floorplan. My rough calculations put the wall height at the apex 3 foot higher on a 12 foot long wall with 4/12 pitch. 3/12 pitch would put the difference at 27″.