In 1993, a young couple commissioned van Berkel and Bos to design “a house that would be acknowledged as a reference for the renovation of the architectural language.” It took the architect six years to fulfill his clients’ wishes, creating a groundbreaking structure out of the interconnected geometries of a Möbius strip. The house is spatially organized so that different aspects of a family’s private life—sleeping, working, playing, and eating—may or may not intersect. The scheme is programmed with specific adjacencies and times in mind, expressing how two people with their own routines may also share moments, or even reverse roles. The wire model emphasizes this diagrammatic quality. Twisting endlessly on itself, Moebius House is a highly specific solution for a contemporary lifestyle, a response to the historical and political aspiration of architects to express the zeitgeist of their time.
Gallery label from 9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design, September 12, 2012–March 25, 2013.
