As global leader of the bizarre world of upscale development, Dubai has yet another feat of both engineering and excess in the works. The latest spire to be added to the desert landscape will be the Time Residences building in the City of Arabia, a 200-unit apartment tower – that will rotate! The complex will turn a full 360 degrees over the course of a week, utilizing stored solar energy to power the turning mechanisms.
+ Gulf News
Sitting on a high-tech bearing system, the 80,000 ton building will rotate using solar power that will be stored and distributed from a power plant in the base of the building. In addition to the 5mm/second rotation, it will also feature a timepiece down its length, allowing onlookers to gauge the hour by studying the constantly-changing façade features.
Although this is one more example of Dubai pushing extravagance for extravagance’s sake, we are somewhat consoled that the uniqueness of the project is derived from a renewable energy source; it’s just too bad that sustainable power will be wasted on such a superfluous feature.
The $109 million dollar project is expected to start in June 2007.
+ Gulf News
thats great and all but havn’t you seen the horrible way the builders in Dubai are treated? They’re slaves.
I am always amazed at what we can build, and while I understand that man’s desire to build fantastic objects has lead to all sorts of breakthroughs in technology, I do think some things just don’t need to be built. This is one of them. I just see a big waste of resources here……oh well, why should Americans have the exclusive on waste? We can share.
What a nice discussion… Isn’t it.
Once we are sustainable with solar energy in operating this building, now it seems that it is a drag that we are not careful with the resources in building such a ‘luxury’…?
But couln’t it be that luxery and substainability are brother and sister. Of the same family that is….
Putting it in another way. How can a human being, REALLY enjoy, if he or she knows that this pleasure is another human beings sadness, at that moment or later… Or even your own sadness in a later moment.
Luxury, real luxery in my opinion, stands for unconditional pleasure. For every-one.
I wish you a very Green X-mas, from Holland,
snow or no snow….!!
Hearts greetings
[...] via: Inhabitat [...]
[...] Dubai is fast becoming the global leader of bizarre upscale developments — for more interesting Dubai architecture, check out the rotating solar tower, and the floating mosque and floating communities which are currently being developed. [...]
Current restrictions, both legal and social, create a barrier to entry for a lot of create projects. For this reason, we are seeing a lot of new and interesting projects get dumped for easier, less risky and more standard projects. It seems as though Dubai is able to break the unwritten rules, especially when it comes to large multi-million dollar projects, because the financiers are the rulers of the city. Do you think an American Bank would finance an extravagant and risky project involving a building that rotates? Not a chance, it would never make it past the legal bodies involved, in part because they don’t have standards in place to describe or categorize the project. Now, I am just theorizing here but I am sure there is some truth to it. Have you have tried to get something done in the United States. In Dubai, they created an entire island in the shape of, well, something like a palm tree. In Maryland, U.S., where I live, they never would have approved it. The permit to build the island would have been turned down because of environmental concerns such as the effects on wild life or wet-land preservation. If that island was off the coast of New York, it would be torn down.
G. P.. http://www.digital50.com
I think the rotating tower is super. Waste, no way. I’m sure the peasants in antiquity thought
the Pyramids and sphinx were a waste. The tower will use solar power, enviromentally
friendly, and maybe some technology will emerge to help the rest of us.
[...] (via: inhabitat) [...]
[...] David Fisher’s Twirling Tower is not the first rotating tower we’ve spotted (Dubai Tower Clocks the Sun), and not the first that generates power from the wind (Wind Shaped Kinetic Pavilion), it’s [...]
OK solar power might be environmenally friendly, but maybe it would have been wise to use it for something else rather than making a tower turn around. Like airconditioning, for instance. If a turning cycle of 24hs would have been possible, then it might have been a good idea: the orientation could have been optimized troughout the day in order to reduce the amount of sunheat. But if the only purpose is just to change the view every once a week, it is a waste. And it makes me sad to see what kind of projects all this good money is being spent on.
[...] shown you some of the extravagant architecture that is being done in Dubai, and this one is no exception. The 120 [...]
[...] recent building boom in the Middle East has given rise to some of the world’s most extravagant and innovative buildings. The latest proposed tower to sprout up among the ever-changing skyline is [...]
[...] in 2006, inhabitat posted about a new development in the land of new developments, Dubai, that will rotate its torso using a [...]
I have projected the rotating shyscrapers more 15 years ago and Ihave the proofs…
But in my project the towers moved tooon the ground…
For my proyect about new generation of space stations see on google “PILOLLI – MOSHES”
For my project of slidestairs contact me : a.pilolli433@hotmail.it