ABSTRACT
In 1935, Angelo Invernizzi, an engineer from Genoa who had previously experimented with reinforced concrete parking structures, completed work on his own vacation house outside Verona. Named il Girasole (the sunflower), Invernizzi’s home is an attempt to mitigate the consequences of the rotation of the earth. The top portion of this house was constructed so that it could, with the aid of two motors, spin to follow the arc of the sun. Like the natural twisting motion of the sunflower through the course of a day, il Girasole can continually maximize a frontal exposure to the sun, thus minimizing shadows, to specific portions of the home. To produce the villa, Invernizzi worked with three other men: the mechanical engineer Romolo Carapacchi, the interior decorator Fausto Saccorotti, and the architect Ettore Fagiuoli. None of these men were particularly avant-garde, with Fagiuoli now considered the “most representative exponent of official Veronese architecture at the time.” 1 The style of the villa is seemingly unremarkable and decidedly Novecento in its base and interior, with the rotating top portion demonstrating tendencies of the machine age: clean lines, industrial railings, and stretched-skin walls. The villa’s immediate yard is, at first glance, nothing more than a stripped-down version of a formal garden, orchestrated by the dictates of geometry. Aside from a few brief articles, and passing mention in collections of Italian twentieth-century architecture, il Girasole has remained insignificant to the discourse of twentieth-century architecture. When mentioned, the villa is a technological feat or an example of the Fascists’ cult of the sun translated into architecture. 2
