Möbius House, UNStudio’s mathematical model

From 1993 to 1998, the architects at UNStudio created a 520 square meter home near Amsterdam that translates everyday family life into a mathematical model: The Möbius Loop.

The client, a family, wanted their home to be designed around their everyday life and for aspects of family life such as sleeping, working, playing and eating to be structured around their daily routines. UNStudio then developed a concept to design the Möbius house with the intertwined trajectory of the Möbius loop. This ensures the alignment of the workspaces and bedrooms, with collective areas positioned at the intersections.

Geometrically speaking, the Möbius strip is a surface that has only one edge and one side and cannot be oriented; for which top and bottom or inside and outside cannot be defined. The architects from UNStudio do not literally transfer this mathematical model to the building, but conceptualize it, translating it into architectural ingredients such as light, stairs and the way people move through the residential building. The curved image of the double-locked torus shows the organization of two intertwined paths. The architects at UNStudio understand this as the movement of the building’s inhabitants in everyday life: the paths of the torus show how two people can live together and yet separately, meeting at certain points that become shared spaces.

The architects extend this idea of two people who follow their own paths of movement and yet share certain moments to the materialization of the Möbius House and its construction. The curved design for the residential building consists of two interlocking lines. The double-locked torus seamlessly integrates the spatial program, movement and structure. The interlocking lines also represent the two main materials of the house: concrete and glass. These move in front of each other along the curves and swap places at certain points.

The abstraction of the Möbius House as a curved image enables a further interpretation that explains the use of only two materials: The time factor in relation to the distribution of rooms. The Möbius loop, which is present in both the floor plan and the section due to its spatial quality, is translated inside into the family’s 24-hour cycle. This essentially consists of sleeping, working and living. At the points where the loop turns over, the materialization of the house changes: glazed details and concrete components swap roles, with glazed façades placed in front of the concrete construction, glass partition walls installed and furniture such as tables and stairs made of concrete. In short: when the loop is reversed, the outer concrete shell is transformed into interior furniture and the glass façades become interior partition walls.

The location and its relationship to the building are just as important for the design. The Möbius House is located on a plot of around 20,000 square meters in Het Gooi, a green residential area around 45 kilometers southeast of Amsterdam. The house is surrounded by meadows and tall beech trees and, with its curved lines and glazed surfaces that interact with nature, acts as a link between architecture and landscape. The inclusion of these aspects of the landscape is made possible by the spatial loop and the effect is reinforced by the maximum elongation of the building.

Together with the landscape architects from West 8 in Rotterdam, the two hectares of land were divided into four distinctly different areas. These form an additional link to the interior organization of the Möbius House and turn living in the house into a walk in nature.

The Möbius House is undoubtedly architecture for people. Even the conceptual idea is geared towards what the family moving into the house needs. However, it is not only the “What?” that is taken into account, but also the “How?” on the same level. UNStudio takes the answer to this question to the extreme by looking at everyday life in its entirety over 24 hours and assigning equal importance to every activity. Using mathematical models to design a building is a method that has been growing steadily in recent years and is increasingly facilitated by CAD programs.

By the way: UNStudio curated this year’s B6! That’s why there’s also a comprehensive online special on UNStudio. Here we present projects such as the Alessi Ribbonwine rack, which also takes up the Möbius strip. We also met Ben van Berkel, founder of UNStudio, and Dana Behrman in their Amsterdam office and talked about how architecture can contribute to people’s health.