The amazing house that always faces the sun

-This article was stolen from here

it’s surprising that there’s so little (english) information available about this house as it seems to be such a piece of engineering brilliance and a building which, when designed, was way ahead of its time. it was built and lived in by an italian ship engineer by the name of angelo invernizzi (along with assistance from architect ettore fagiuoli) between the years of 1929 & 1935 and can still be found in marcellise, italy. have a look and see if you can work out the unique feature.



incredible. the top half of the building rotates around the centre of the circluar track on which it rests (which happens to form the roof of the lower, static half of the building), much like the hands of a clock. invernizzi was intent on designing a house whose main windows would always be facing the sun, so he came up with the idea you see here. the ‘tower’ which forms the pivot is 43 metres tall and the power needed to move the structure is generated by 2 motors (3 horsepower in total): a full revolution of the 1′500ton building would take just over 9hrs, travelling at a speed of 4mm per second, unless of course the rotation was delibrately slowed.

The house is called ‘il girasole’ - the sunflower - and, while not the best quality, some plans of its development can be seen below.