Revolving house has 360 degree view

WAVRE, Belgium — With energy prices rising, Francois Massau, a local coal merchant-turned-builder who died here impoverished and alone in 2002 at the age of 97, is enjoying a small measure of posthumous fame.

In the 1950s, when few people talked about ecology or conserving energy, Massau built what was among the earliest revolving homes. He built it in 1958 so his sickly wife, a schoolteacher, could enjoy sunshine and warmth any time of the day or the year. (There often isn't much of either in Belgium.)

Today, as energy prices soar, revolving buildings have become fashionable. In southern Germany, Rolf Disch has built a solar-powered rotating house; in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, David Fisher, an Israeli-born Italian architect, plans an 80-story rotating skyscraper, the Dynamic Tower. Some call it sunflower architecture.

The technology Massau pioneered was so effective it still works today, and all three of the revolving houses he built remain operational. Yet on the 50th anniversary of his first house, there will be no ceremonies, no special tours or honors.

"There's total indifference," said Guy Otten, a retired journalist who often wrote about Massau. "He was always seen as eccentric."

Massau's first revolving house stands in a stylish neighborhood on a rise above Wavre. Its circular brick and concrete foundation is stationary, supporting a steel track on which the house revolves, moved by a small electric motor. Its roof, a concrete slab supported by columns, is stationary, too.

"It's the most beautiful house in Wavre," said Dominique Quinet, a beautician who lives in the house.

She pressed one of two green buttons on the living-room wall, and the house moved imperceptibly but for a slight creaking noise. She pressed a third, red button to stop it. The house moves slowly, making a full 360-degree turn in 90 minutes. "If it's warm, I can move the living room into the shade," she said.

An ingenious part of the house is the tangle of plastic pipe and electrical switches in the cellar that assure a steady supply of water and electricity and removal of sewage waste even while the house is turning.

The 1,400-square-foot house, which has four bedrooms, a kitchen and a large crescent-shaped living- and dining-room, is energy-efficient. On sunny winter days, when snow lies outside, it can be a comfortable 70 degrees inside, without heating, Quinet said, if the house is turned to the sun.

Philippe Willems, Massau's grandson, lives in the second of Massau's three houses, in Malonne, a village south of Wavre.

"If you turn the house five times a day, you change your home, you change the light, you change everything," he said.