Back to Lois' original idea: on the "bungalow" theme - it sounds like my home-made long hive, which takes 14x12 National frames. It's about 4 foot long, and has a home-made "Happy keeper" style tube varroa floor. I started it with a BS 5-frame nuc (i.e. shorter frames, the bottoms of which have conveniently been used for drone brood). I tend to put foundationless frames in there, and there's also some top bars. No major varroa or other problems so far, and the many wasps of this season have got short shrift. There's some pictures in my album.
Top bars are great: the bees can do their natural thing, which is to drape themselves in necklaces under the bars as if measuring out everything in bee-lengths. In my hive this results in faster comb-building than when they draw out the foundation. Cut comb from top bars is really special, but they definitely teach you to be careful - especially with fresh, soft, new comb. As long as you've got the time and patience I can't really fault them though. You can even shake the bees off to inspect the brood comb as long as you're careful. My long hive bees are a hell of a lot quieter than the colony in my National hive, and have done a great deal better this year, although exactly why is hard to say. I suppose they may just have been a better colony from the start, or perhaps it's just a bit warmer and drier than the National. In any case it seems to suit them.
As far as I know, long hives are popular in many parts of Europe (e.g. Scandinavia, Russia and bumper-honey-producing Ukraine). I've found that they overwinter well (you can move up the follower board to fit the hive space to the bees, so they don't have to keep the whole hive space warm). Mine is versatile and seems to suit the bees well. And if I decide to use all top bars, or go off them and use all foundation-based BS frames, it's simple enough to change. It's the same width as a National, so I can put supers on too if the bees manage to fill up the whole hive. Or I can "go Dartington", and put a second colony in the opposite end, e.g. from a shook swarm. Re-uniting is straightforward. Feeding is OK; you can make a frame feeder like the ones in this thread, or use jumbo feeders on top of the frames, under a gabled or extended roof, or in a suitable rim/eke.
Drawbacks: frames are standard, but the hive is home-made and this style isn't readily available, although one or two suppliers make them (e.g. honeybeesuppliers, near Banbury, had some on their website:
http://www.honeybeesuppliers.co.uk/Hives.htm - haven't tried this particular hive so can't vouch for how good they are). Other drawbacks: it's heavy to lift if you want to shift the colony around; and if you use top bars or foundationless frames then you will be into wax production as much as honey - bees use a lot more energy to make wax than to store honey, so the overall harvest will be less, but you will get a lot of very fresh, clean wax (which I personally find as valuable).
Having used both, I will be sticking to long hives in the future, for what it's worth.