At the mercy of interior and exterior forces, ReActor is a piece of performance architecture by architect-artist team Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley.
While the cost of real estate can often leave your head spinning, very few properties have the ability to actually make you feel motion sick just from looking at them.
Enter ReActor, an experimental home built in Ghent, New York, that rotates 360 degrees and tilts like a seesaw as you walk around inside it.
The tiny home that measures just 13.4 metres long by 2.4 metres wide, sits atop a 4.6-metre concrete column, enabling it to spin and tilt in response to the movements of its inhabitants and exterior and interior conditions.
The ReActor glass house rotates 360 degrees and tilts as the occupants move around inside. Photo: Art Omi/ Richard Barnes.
While the structure – consisting of two balconies, bedrooms and sitting areas on either side of the kitchen and bathroom at its centre – sits balanced when it’s empty, it is a whole different story when people set foot inside.
Those two brave people are renowned architect-artist duo Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley, who designed and built the house, in a field at the OMI International Arts Centre, as part of an experimental, performative series of “social relationship architecutre”.
While the the habitable sculpture remains balanced as they both stand on opposite ends, it seesaws up and down as they move around their sides of the property, demonstrating the relationship between architecture and its inhabitants.
When two people stand at opposite ends of the glass house it remains balanced. Photo: Art Omi/ Richard Barnes.
Apart from putting their sea legs to the test, the movement of the structure means that they always know when the other person is moving around, even when they are not interacting with each other.
Although the structure isn’t wired for electricity, it’s a fully functional house, which the pair live in for multiple day long performance stints. It comes complete with plumbing and toilets that drain into a holding tank.
Adjusting to life in the long, lean, glass house also means getting used to being watched, as art fans ogle at them as they go about their daily lives.
Living solo in the property would not work well. Photo: Art Omi/ Richard Barnes.
If you’re sensitive to movement, just as the property is, this experimental home is probably your worst nightmare. However, if you have trusty sea legs and a good stomach, it could be a lot of fun for a few days, even if the novelty of running from side to side would probably wear off once the first spells of dizziness set in.