Revolving Architecture :
A History of Buildings that Rotate, Swivel, and Pivot
Chad Randl

Alternately lauded as the future of architecture or dismissed as pure folly, revolving buildings are a fascinating missing chapter in architectural history with surprising relevance to issues in contemporary architectural design. Rotating structures have been employed to solve problems and create effects that stationary buildings can't achieve. Rotating buildings offered ever-changing vistas and made interior spaces more flexible and adaptable. They were used to impress visitors, treat patients, and improve the green qualities of a structure by keeping particular rooms in or out of the sun.

The follow-up to his critically acclaimed book A-frame, Chad Randl's Revolving Architecture: A History of Buildings that Rotate, Swivel, and Pivot explores the history of this unique building type, investigating the cultural forces that have driven people to design and inhabit them. Revolving Architecture is packed with a variety of fantastic revolving structures such as a jail that kept inmates under a warden's constant surveillance, glamorous revolving restaurants, tuberculosis treatment wards, houses, theaters, and even a contemporary residential building whose full-floor apartments circle independently of each other. International examples from the late 1800s though the present demonstrate the variety and innovation of these dynamic structures.


Chad Randl is an architectural historian working at the National Park Service. He is the author of A-frame and has written for Old House Journal, Adirondack Life, the journal of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and other publications. In the fall of 2007, he will begin pursuing his PhD in architectural history at Cornell.
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Editorial Reviews

New architecture & design that stretch the imagination, Christian Science Monitor:
"If architecture inevitably invites expanding our perspectives of ourselves and the world, the concept of buildings offering 360-degree panoramic views should have been a wild success. Instead, revolving buildings over the centuries and across cultures have been the most exotic of oddities. The Seattle Space Needle has been the most successful building of this type in history, having attracted over 45 million visitors since 1962. Yet several of its rotating restaurants have failed, a commonplace among high-rise rotating eateries. Randl, a graduate student in architectural history, writes with winsome affection, astute erudition, and gentle wit about rotating restaurants, sanitariums, jails, and apartment buildings in this generously illustrated, mind-boggling survey. These aren't mere musings about eccentric designs. There's a sharp subtext here about why failed designs resurface periodically despite abysmal track records in terms of widespread public acceptance. Blind faith in technological progress, symbolized by revolving architecture, is far from an exotic subject." — Norman Weinstein (October 3, 2008)

New York:
"The book explores environments that move - restaurants, theaters, apartments, and garages among them - that started popping up in the 1950s and 60s." (August, 2008)

The Modern World, Dwell:
"Hotel restaurants, railroad yards, experimental solariums, World war II French military bunkers, and even rooms in Emperor Neros palace all have one thing in common: At some point in history, one of their kind was built to revolve. Chad Randl has put together a dizzying spin through the history of turning structures." (October, 2008)

The Midwest Book Review:
"Any library strong in architecture needs this unusual assessment." — James A. Cox (March, 2009)

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