This summer villa was the brainchild of the engineer Angelo Invernizzi, who lived and worked in Genoa but brought his family here on vacation. On a gently rising slope in vine-growing country, a rectangular concrete platform supports an L-shaped house, the top level of which is cut away to form a roof terrace.
At the angle of the L-shape is a spiral staircase that literally forms the pivot of the plan – the upper section is mounted on a steel track and is connected to two motors. These enable the hose to rotate on small wheels through 360 degrees in the course of nine hours and 20 minutes, hence the house’s name the Italian word for a sunflower.
It is perhaps the most extreme example in the world of the Modernist cult of sunlight. While other Modernist architects adopted curved forms to allow for the path of the sun, Invernizzi went one better by making the building itself turn as well.
The limited practical benefits of his idea scarcely justified going to such lengths – it is far easier to walk from room to room in a house in pursuit of the sun, than to move the room itself. Over time, the use of the motor has begun to erode the platform, and the house is now seldom set in motion, although it may be visited by application.
