Villa Girasole, Rationalist villa in San Martino Buon Albergo, Italy.
Villa Girasole is a rationalist villa with a rotating L-shaped structure placed on a circular foundation. The building features metallic details, geometric forms, and ceramic coverings throughout its exterior and interior spaces.
Angelo Invernizzi, a Genoese engineer, drew up the designs in 1929 and building work ran from 1931 to 1935, carried out only in the summer months with architect Ettore Fagiuoli. The load-bearing structure first turned on 14 November 1933, and the Istituto Luce newsreel announced the completed house in 1935. Invernizzi and his wife Lina died there a year apart, in 1957 and 1958.
The name comes from the Italian for sunflower, because the house turns to follow the sun. Ettore Fagiuoli designed the interiors in a nautical style, and the glass-block turret on the roof was meant to recall Genoa's lighthouse, a nod to the city where Invernizzi worked. Invernizzi's daughter Lidia recalled that he invited painters, sculptors and furniture makers to take part in the building.
The villa has not been open to the public since 2015 because of maintenance work, so visits are limited to the exterior. The rotating section can no longer turn: ground erosion has deformed the rails and sliding mechanisms. The property lies in Marcellise, a hamlet of San Martino Buon Albergo, within about eleven hectares of park.
The upper section was designed to rotate daily to follow the sun, offering optimal light and temperature control throughout the day. This innovative concept was extraordinary for its time and was rarely replicated elsewhere.
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