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Rotating house a tree hugger's dream come true

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I'm as big a fan of saving the environment as the next guy, so I appreciate the need to make sure our homes are as energy efficient and environmentally friendly as possible, but here's a design that takes it to the extreme.

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. More pictures after the jump.

Azure Magazine, via Tree Hugger

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(3) Comments

dondunick:
A realy good design. I have built one in NZ about 20 years ago .It realy works Great Stuff...More »


Comments

By trinity343 at 12:30 PM ON 04/13/07

that's cool looking though. i love the engineering and design behind it. basically....it's pretty :)

By heikoka at 5:48 PM ON 04/13/07

I like the house too, its in Freiburg / Germany.
It was build way back in 1994 and it`s nice to see that more and more people get interesstet in enviroment friendly housing consepts.

By dondunick at 7:21 PM ON 03/29/08

A realy good design. I have built one in NZ about 20 years ago .It realy works Great Stuff


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