Architecture

Richard Foster House - 1968

Richard T. Foster
122 Olmstead Hill Road – Wilton – CT – USA

Foster - a partner in Philip Johnson's office – designed this house for his own family, wanting to take advantage of the varied views in every direction while leaving most of the landscape undisturbed. His ultimate solution was a revolving round house, the first fully rotating house in the world.
The house is placed on a narrow, 3.7 metres high pole. This fixed concrete core, with only a small entry and spiral staircase, houses a three-ton ball-bearing - the type used for warship gun turrets - which enables the structure above to rotate with 10 different speeds. At top speed, a full rotation takes about 48 minutes. The revolving structure is created not only for aesthetic reasons, but is also - according to Foster - energy saving. Rotating the house in wintertime allows every room to get a turn at being heated by the sun, reducing fuel expenses while the costs of turning the house is said to be no more than that of running a refrigerator.
Every wedge-shaped room has an exterior wall of floor-to-ceiling glass panels, with sliding doors to the balcony, while the rest of the outer façade - including the underside of the overhanging roof - is clad with cedar shingles.



Sources:
Rooms With a View. The Revolutionary Design of Wilton's Round House.
Article by Carolyn Rundle Field in Town Vibe Wilton, July-August 2010
Morris Media Group, Ridgefield, 2010