Since an article just appeared in MCM Groovy covering the Aluminaire House, which is a modernist prefab house meant to be assembled from manufactured parts, the Circular House of Serge Binotto comes readily to mind.

Serge Binotto was an assistant to the French designer, Jean Prouve, who, if one is familiar with mid century modern furniture, one knows of his famous chair or other articles of furniture still widely available. Prouve began as a metal worker and brought notions from his work to ideas on the incorporation of manufacturing technology into architecture, an idea not fully utilized among residential projects to this day. Binotto inculcated these concepts in creating a house for his parents that used prefabricated insulated panels to construct this circular house much like the methods to assemble the Aluminaire House.

 

 

Jean Prouve, himself, experimented extensively with prefabricated structures. His prefab houses would come in a pack and be assembled on site.

 

 

The modernists were not a sedate bunch. They constantly experimented with ways of creating architecture on all levels. Furthermore, with the fruition of what the Industrial Revolution had started, manufacturing technology seemed quite appropriate in furthering the modernist ideals.  Also, a feature in architecture as well as art in general were the tools of basic geometric forms such as the square, rectangle, circle or triangle. Sometimes these basic forms were celebrated strongly and predominantly.

 

 

So in coming to the Binotto or Circular House we see the attempt to use the circle as the beginning point of a residence that is put together with repeated structural components. Since the same mechanisms are used over and over again, technically this house could easily be made larger without changing anything fundamental to the design or requiring any sort of special rendering.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a video walk through created to give the reader a better idea of the internal space and layout. This 3D model does not have the house furnished for further clarity.

 

 

 

 

HBosler