Modern Living: Egg-Shaped Nursery

WHICH came first, the building or the egg? In this case, the building—an apartment house in overcrowded Geneva, Switzerland, where Teacher Marcel Lachat, 23, and Wife Yanick had a $50-a-month studio. Fretting over a space crisis caused by the impending arrival of their first baby and unable to get official permission to move into a larger flat, part-time Architect Lachat fashioned a $350 egg from glass fiber and polyurethene. After Baby Sarah was born, he attached the egg to a window frame of his apartment (see cut) and moved her into the 353-cu.-ft. shell. Though building inspectors declared the structure “dangerous and unauthorized,” Lachat refused to take it down until his request for bigger quarters got results. This month his ingenuity and stubbornness paid off. The Lachats moved into a two-bedroom apartment finally located by embarrassed city officials and Sarah reluctantly abandoned Geneva’s only egg-shaped nursery.