Home Design Pictures

Rolf Disch’s Heliotrop Rotating House

Rolf Disch has designed a new house with a solar-collecting array on top that follows the Sun all day long, but the real feat of engineering comes from the structure itself. The entire house rotates on a central axle. The front of the house is composed of triple-glazed glass to point toward that glowing ball of gas in the sky during the winter, while a heavily insulated backside rotates around to keep the heat at bay during those warm summer months.

And that balcony you see at the top? That isn’t a simple railing system; those are solar vacuum tubes for heating water and moving it throughout the house. This house is so energy efficient it actually generates more energy than it needs. And I thought the five-star energy rating for my new home was a big deal.

The house has been the personal residence of the Architect since 1994.