Friday 27 June 2008

Pie in the Sky?

Thursday's Ta Nea paper had a report about an 80 storey rotating skyscraper. This is being designed by an Italian called David Fisher. More about him later.

There are wind turbines between each floor, and solar panels, and allegedly the building will generate ten times as much power as it needs. The floors will rotate once every 1-3 hours. If you go for one of the villas, then you have a whole floor to yourself and can rotate it at will. And you'll have your own private lift, which I think takes your car to your floor. Oh yes and a swimming pool, a sauna, a garden...

There' s a suggestion that as this building is wind-powered, they might build one in Chicago. If so, those of you who live in that part of the world will be excited to know that the price for a 1,300 sq ft luxury flat in the Dubai buildling is only $4m, with a 13,000 sq ft villa available for a mere $38 million. That's pretty good - the way fuel prices are going, it won't be long before it costs you $4m to fill up your Merc. And we're talking Dubai. Presumably the Chicago one will be even cheaper.

I wonder if this will ever really get built. It all sounds a bit ambitious. In particular there's something that's bothering me. Supposing you have a dump. The sewage pipes are in the middle bit of the building that doesn't rotate. The toilets are moving constantly. How does the brown matter get into the sewer? I won't believe it until someone shows me a 3-d turd's eye view. And even if it works in theory, what happens when it all goes horribly wrong, and 80 floors worth of shit literally hits the fan, or rather the turbines?

Anyway, here's the video:



Does this guy look like a phoney, or is it just me? Apparently, he hasn't been active in the field of architecture that much lately, and hasn't designed a skyscraper before. He also claimed to have an honorary doctorate from a US university, but that claim was retracted when someone checked with the university.

I hope that everyone who says that this is just a scam, or a computer-designed dream are wrong, as I think that it would be great if all buildings were rotatable.

Time will tell...

8 comments:

Bee said...

I'm hoping the crap tubes are in the middle stationed part of the building.

Bee said...

AND FIRST!

Brian o vretanos said...

Bee:

Apparently they're talking about using some fancy pipe technology used by airplanes that refuel in mid-air. Sounds like lots of opportunity to go wrong, I mean they probably have crews of engineers checking the aircraft pipes every flight. How often do people check their domestic sewage outlets???

Tracy Rambles On And On said...

I don't know about all of this. Poo pipes swinging all over the place, using a new technology. It all sounds like a recipe for disaster and somebody getting covered in poo.
I don't care how much I paid to live in a place like that, if poo hits me all bets are off!

Brian o vretanos said...

Tracy:

I agree, if it ever gets built it'll all go terribly wrong at some point.

What I'm wondering about is the huge wind turbines that are between every floor. If the shit hits those, it'll be flying through the city... You'd just have to carry an umbrella, I suppose.

I'm glad I don't live in Dubai, or Chicago.

Dan said...

I'd have to live on the very top floor.
I can picture a whole section of a floor getting detached from the center and killing a bunch of people.

Brian o vretanos said...

Dan:

We all seem to be agreed that this thing is a bad idea...

Jean Knee said...

I like the idea even though it will never work or get built.

and as always I have a fun anecdote to go with

They have a rotating ball restaurant in Dallas. It moves pretty fast. So I went to the ladies room and when I came out my table was gone. it took me awhile to find it (the center was stationary of course) I think I may have had one or a dozen drinks so it really freaked me out.