Amazing 'Spinning Home' Takes a Sad Turn

Tess Panzer
Updated

Imagine sitting on the couch in your living room, when suddenly the sun breaks through the window, flooding your room with warmth and blinding light. Now imagine being able to push a button that causes your entire home to spin, once again allowing you to enjoy your book in a shady spot on the sofa. This was the dream of a New York commodities investor, Shiva Vencat, and with the help of inventor Patrick Marcilli it became his reality.

“You leave your car in the sun, it becomes a furnace,” Vencat told The New York Times. “So what do people do? They move it to the shade. You can’t do that with your home. Or so I thought.”

So Vencat thought, until he visited Brittany, France, on a business trip back in the 1990s, and encountered a dome-shaped home that could spin. This spinning home became his obsession and his quest, and upon his return from France, Vencat decided to create his own rendition stateside, in rural New York.

The beautifully crafted 2,500-square-foot home sits nestled in 28 acres of idyllic forest, and surprisingly requires only a small motor to keep it gently spinning around. What is perhaps more surprising, though, is that after four years on the market, this design-forward home has no takers. In fact, viable interest in the home (which is now on its third broker) is so low that Vencat has had to lower his listing price from $1.2 million to $975,000.

Vencat, who was sure “the dome home” would be the housing of choice in the future, was disappointed to find an underwhelming level of enthusiasm and told The New York Times, “I thought America is the land of pioneers, but apparently not.”

Perhaps the average homeowner simply wants what he or she grew up with — namely four walls, a floor, and a roof. Spinning rooms, moving floors, and houses shaped like anything other than — well — houses don’t seem to appeal to those looking to settle into a new home.

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For now, it seems Vencat will have to settle for renting out his dream home, which goes for $325 a night on AirBnB — a small price to pay for a lounge in the shade.

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