His wife asked him: can you rotate our house? He said: why not …
Ed and Annet live in their dream house. A few years ago, they exchanged a city in the centre of the Netherlands for their self-designed rotating house on the outskirts of Alkmaar. The view changes very slowly all the time, with the occasional view of the garden, the neighbours or the polder. The couple have lived there for 6 years now, and they would never want to live anywhere else. “It’s great living here.
“For thirty years I wanted to live in a cube, a square of ten by ten meters, and then my wife asked if we could rotate it. That seemed wonderful to us”. And so it happened: Ed, an architect by profession with experience in building windmills, designed the dream house together with an architect.
The house runs on an ‘English wheelbarrow’, with a large hollow column in the middle through which the cables and pipes pass. The cables hang in loops and the pipes have couplings that can rotate. Sensors register the position of the house on the day. “It takes about 26 minutes and then we are from the starting point to the finishing point,” Ed explains. The house has large windows, so the varying views can be enjoyed to the full.
Ed and Annet don’t get confused when they leave. “And the dog doesn’t panic either, he always knows where the front door is”. When asked if he ever feels nauseous, Ed says: “Noooo, there are people who have sat here at the table, ‘oh oh, it’s moving a bit, I’m getting a bit dizzy’, but I think that’s a bit exaggerated. It goes so slowly, it’s not like a merry-go-round.”
“It is great living here. We’re so happy every day that we can live here,” Ed concludes, “The house is so light, so much glass, we can ee everything.
Info on the builder https://www.edkueter.nl/
Video production by https://mindfulbuildingandliving.com/
