ARCHITECTURE

Transforming house turns inside out for summer, has 8 configurations

November 19, 2012

Thick insulating walls that make ideal facades in the winter months change places with the glazed panels during the summer (Image: The D*Haus Comapny)

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Architectural outfit The D*Haus Company has unveiled a design for a remarkable transforming house, the D*Dynamic, which, taking cues from a mathematical problem posed at the turn of the 20th century, can fold itself into eight different configurations. The design's adaptability makes it ideally suited to extreme climates, D*Haus claims.

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The design is based on the Haberdasher's Puzzle, discovered by English mathematician Henry Dudeney, which allows an equilateral triangle cut into four parts to be folded into a square while all pieces remain in contact with at least one other. The puzzle has formed the basis for much of D*Haus's work, including furniture and lighting fixture designs.

Transfer the puzzle to the footprint of a house, though, and you arrive at a home that not only changes shape, but is apparently well poised to adapt to the changing of the seasons over the course of a year. Thick insulating walls that make ideal facades in the winter months change places with the glazed panels during the summer, the house effectively turning itself inside out, and upping the exposed surface area.

But the in-built dynamism is useful over the course of a day too, D*Haus explains on its website. "In the summer plan, bedroom one faces East and watches the sun rise as you wake up. One can rotate the house so that the user is constantly in sunlight, while the house generates energy through its solar panels."

The source or quantity of energy for the house's transforming mechanism hasn't yet been spelled out, but the transformation is enabled by tracks embedded into the ground, and, obviously, the hinges that connected the various sections of the house.

The video below gives a sense of D*Dynamic in motion. The status of the project is a little misty, but it appears that a full-scale working D*Dynamic is yet to be built.

An exhibition of D*Haus's work is currently on display at the Anise Gallery in London.

Source: The D*Haus Company, via Architizer

About the Author

James is a graduate of the Open University, with a B.Sc. in Technology and a Diploma in Design and Innovation. After a decade in building design engineering, he side-stepped into writing about green tech and the environment. When not clattering about the web, he listens to early 90s hip hop, writes bad haiku and ponders the merits of an English three-man seam attack. All articles by James Holloway Follow @jamesholloway