After displaying some immobile, but twisted-looking buildings and skyscrapers, we're ready to show you real rotating buildings. These buildings are quite simply incredible.
The Villa Girasole (means Sunflower), designed and built by the Italian engineer Angelo Invernizzi between 1929 and 1935 near Verona, Italy.
The L-shaped two-story house rests on a circular base, which is 144 ft (44 m) in diameter and two diesel engines, which allow the house to follow the motion of the sun with a maximum speed of 4 millimeters per second. The building has electronically operated blinds, multicolored mosaics in the bathroom and an Ettore Fagioli-designed interior.
(via Obvious Magazine, Loftenberg and Syncronia)
The three Heliotrope houses, designed by Rolf Disch, built in Freiburg im Breisgau (1994), Offenburg (1994) and Hilpolstein (1995), Germany.
These houses were the first ever to create more energy than it uses from entirely renewable sources with a solar-thermal balcony railing, a geothermal heat exchanger, a dual-axis solar photovoltaic panel and a CHP (combined heat and power unit). All of these houses are physically rotating to track the sun.
(via Wikimedia Commons/Andrewglasser)
The 160 ft (50 m) high Suite Vollard, the world's first spinning residential building in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, designed by Bruno de Franco, built between 1995 and 2001. Each of its 11 residential apartments can take a full revolution in an hour.
(via Radamés Manosso, OpenBuildings and Dibari-id)
The 5000 sq ft (464 sqm) two-story Around The Sea house, Green Gables Shore, Prince Edward Island, Canada
(via Around The Sea)
The Rotor House with a 64 sq ft (6 sqm) cylinder containing a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, designed by the legendary Luigi Colani, 2004
(via MocoLoco)
The 5,300 sq ft (492 sqm) unique rotating house of Al and Janet Johnstone in La Mesa, California, completed in 2004
The second rotating floor rides on top of the 50' in diameter first floor on 40, 8" bearings that each have a 50,000 pound capacity, a main bearing in the center of the elevator shaft carries 1,364,000 pounds and the drive wheels (two 16" x 3" wheels) are in pillow block bearings that carry 150,000 pounds each - that's a 3,664,000 pound capacity, the second rotating floor weighs 600,000 pounds. It is driven by a 1.5 horse power DC motor, it takes .8 hp to start and .75 hp to run the house in either direction anywhere from one revolution in 33 minutes up to one revolution in 24 hours, it can rotate in either direction as many times as one would want (it doesn't have to unwind). The motor drives the drive wheels through a 1564 to 1 dual worm gear transmission - very smoothly. – according to their website Rotating Home.
The glass and steel Everingham Rotating House, near Wingham, New South Wales, Australia, built in 2006 by Luke Everingham for his family
The building is a 79 ft (24 m) diameter octagon and has an electric motor which could help to take a full rotation in 30-120 minutes.
(via Everingham Rotating House)
The planned Dynamic Tower (also known as the Da Vinci Tower or Dynamic Architecture Building), an 1,378 ft (420 m) high moving skyscraper, designed by David Fisher in 2008, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Each floor will be able to rotate independently. It will take 90 minutes to take a full rotation with the maximum speed of 20 ft (6 m) per minute. The skyscraper will be powered from solar panels on the roof and the top of each floor, plus wind turbines between the rotating floors.
(via Dynamic Architecture)
Bonus: The vision of John Körmeling, Tilburg, Netherlands, powered by solar panels.
(via gizmodo and Studio van Damme)