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Fisher's new rotating Skyscraper works like a Rubics Cube

SuperBeatledud

I got goosebumps and threw up in my mouth at the same time over this new building.



Personaly I don't know how any of this is possible, be it for the price, the time frame, or that anyone would do fund this.

 
Jun 25, 08 12:33 am
modernistsj

i dont understand how this could work structurally...i mean wouldnt the load on the building change based on every rotation....

Jun 25, 08 5:41 am  · 
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fiasco

massive central core and ball bearings to rotate maybe.

Electricity is simple, but plumbing? How do you drain a sink, or a toilet, when the connection bewteen the drain pipe and the building is in constant flux?

Jun 25, 08 7:23 am  · 
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boxy

let's see spiderman climb this shit

Jun 25, 08 8:02 am  · 
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Synergy

farang it could be modelled and designed with stochastic methods. The time involved would be extensive but certainly not impossible.

As for the MEP, I would assume that the pipes, electrical etc would funnel into the core of the shaft that the units rotate around. Perhaps some form of flexible piping and conduit to accomodate the twisting motion would be required.

Jun 25, 08 8:07 am  · 
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Synergy

sorry farnamg

Jun 25, 08 8:08 am  · 
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PsyArch

I met the Architect of this in Dubai early in the year. He bounced around the conference like a pinball. There didn't seem to be much response in the positive from anyone.

The BBC have a video. The accompanying story doesn't mention any engineer, funder, site, although the wall street journal article from April '07, excerpted below, does mention uber-engineer Leslie Robertson.

Don't get me wrong, it looks like toy-box candy but, really, the Atkins twin towers in Bahrain with three huge building mounted turbines only claim to produce 15% of building energy needs. Those buildings don't even move.

This new set of press releases is somewhat reminiscent of the releases from the Wall Street Journal April 2007:

Dubai Puts a New Spin on Skyscrapers

David Fisher, an Italian-Israeli architect, has dreamed up a 68-story combination hotel, apartment and office tower where the floors would rotate 360 degrees. A single rotation would take around 90 minutes. "It makes me ill," says Eugene Kohn, principal at New York-based Kohn Pedersen Fox. Mr. Fisher, who says it will rise for a mere $330 million. predicts construction will start in six months and be complete 22 months after that. Mr. Fisher, 58 years old, was born in Tel Aviv. His early projects include the never-built design for a plaza near Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. He has never designed a high-rise building. But he has assembled a formidable design team, however, including high-rise engineer Leslie Robertson, who is best known for designing the innovative structure of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers that were destroyed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001...


So, costs have more than doubled in a year, and start-on-site remains six months away.

Jun 25, 08 9:17 am  · 
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Apurimac

This kids, is why we're always laughed at.

Jun 25, 08 9:23 am  · 
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PsyArch

However, further research on the Fisher's Moscow version reveals some heavyweight backing from Mirax. No mention of the wind turbines on the Mirax site though.

Jun 25, 08 9:40 am  · 
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treekiller

A simple solution to utilities is to make each unit self-sufficient and off the grid - you can get all that stuff off the shelf for boats and RVs.

composting toilets & biogas generator, recycling water systems, gen sets, et cetera. the inhabitants will just have to haul their own water/fuel from the core to their tanks and schedule visits from the the pump truck to empty their tanks!

Jun 25, 08 10:21 am  · 
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Synergy

Treekiller,

somehow I doubt the people willing to pay to live in this thing would be willing to accept hauling all of their own waste around, it kind of contradicts with the idea of a futuristic high tech living space.

Jun 25, 08 10:36 am  · 
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21Ronin

I have an idea. Let's make a tower the most in efficient structure in the world!

Jun 25, 08 10:42 am  · 
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treekiller

21R - that would be a tree. self erecting/repairing, from a renewable material with little embedded energy, is a carbon sink, and is solar powered....

Jun 25, 08 10:48 am  · 
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Apurimac

Actually, TK may be onto something. If the units are self-contained and the inhabitants get to chose the speed at which their unit rotates then they could select a time of day for their unit to stop and link up to the utlities, waste could then be disposed, new water pumped into the cistern, and gas into a tank. Electricity could be constantly supplied to each unit via something like a 3rd rail and when occupants want to enter or leave, the unit again stops and links to an elevator.

Still, that sounds pretty dumb to me...

Jun 25, 08 10:52 am  · 
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Apurimac

but, tk trees pollute!!!

(they really do, but less than buildings.)

Jun 25, 08 10:53 am  · 
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21Ronin

Structurally inefficient.....tk

Jun 25, 08 11:00 am  · 
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SuperBeatledud

Has anyone visited the main site for this building? Watch the intro, I especially like the end of the world, doomsday, evil villain at the end of a video game type of music. Kind of suggests that the building is satanic in nature. Plans and other renderings can be found on this site.

Jun 25, 08 11:02 am  · 
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cayne1

I assume it works the same way your run of the mill rotating restaurant works - just many times over. I have no idea how they work, but why would he reinvent the wheel when it's already there.

Jun 25, 08 11:46 am  · 
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mation

Wow, and Fisher has even been caught lying about a degree from Columbia U:

"Skeptics might question Fisher's credentials to pull off the job.

In a biography he had been distributing for months, he said he graduated from the University of Florence in 1976, came to New York in the mid-1980s and later developed hotels and ran a company that specialized in stone and prefabricated construction materials.

The biography also said he received an honorary doctorate from "The Prodeo Institute at Columbia University in New York." No such institution exists, however, and Columbia said it had never awarded Fisher an honorary degree.

Asked to explain the discrepancy, Fisher said, through his New York publicists, that he had been awarded the degree by the Catholic University of Rome during a ceremony in 1994 held at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, which is near Columbia's campus.

Asked again to clarify the name of the school that conferred the degree, Fisher's publicists said in an e-mail that the information has been removed from his bio "because he wants to be entirely accurate and cannot be with this information." "

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/06/25/architect_hopes_new_skyscraper_keeps_us_spinning/

Jun 25, 08 12:17 pm  · 
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mdler

how do you waterproof this shit?

Jun 25, 08 12:34 pm  · 
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Antisthenes

eye candy pays but it is not construtable

Jun 25, 08 12:36 pm  · 
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PsyArch

mation,
I'm not surprised in the slightest.
A very, very strange little man.

Jun 25, 08 12:39 pm  · 
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treekiller

my office was just discussing some 70' diameter turntables we did in a convention center- the structural deflection needs to limited to under 1/5000 versus the standard 1/360 to maintain the tolerances and clearance. that's expensive shit.

so how do you keep a client from wanting something to turn?

Jun 25, 08 2:18 pm  · 
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Apurimac

If the sky's the limit, it could be done. However it could easily become the most expensive build in history. The easy solution would be to simply make each floor a unit and put the bath and kitchen in a central core, however that would defeat his thesis of being able to give each unit unlimited 360 degree views. You wouldn't need to rotate each floor if each floor was its own unit.

Jun 25, 08 2:24 pm  · 
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Synergy

70' diameter turntables with a deflection of 1/5000? what could possible require such precision, and also how did you measre the deflecion? were they supported only at the center and you were looking for a deflection of less than 1/16th of an inch?

Jun 25, 08 2:32 pm  · 
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Antisthenes

it says on the BBC article the client can make any floor turn by the command of their voice.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7472722.stm

"I call these buildings designed by time, shaped by life,"

Jun 25, 08 2:46 pm  · 
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Arzo

i remember going on camping trips in the coachman and we had to pump our poop out of it before we left the campground. maybe every so often you just hit the button and rotate into the poop pump out position.

Jun 25, 08 3:12 pm  · 
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Apurimac

^see that's what i'm thinking

Jun 25, 08 3:23 pm  · 
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mdler

sand + moving pieces = oh shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jun 25, 08 3:34 pm  · 
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treekiller

'nother flaw is the 'wind turbines' between floors in one of the dynamic pipe dreams. can you say turbulence = flatulence?????

also noted in the video is the limited displacement by each level- creating that sort of mechanism adds to the complications versus allowing each floor to spin independently....

synergy- don't know more details.

Jun 25, 08 5:02 pm  · 
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Urbanist

Fisher should consider the possibility of taking advantage of the motion to generate sufficient power to run the building (including the motion iyself) -- architecture as the long-elusive perpetual motion machine:

Jun 25, 08 5:34 pm  · 
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randscraper

Trees can fall over in high wind or wet soil

Jun 25, 08 11:29 pm  · 
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evilplatypus

if it helps me get laid

Jun 25, 08 11:32 pm  · 
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Apurimac

SBD, that is officially the most dramatic piece of real-estate propaganda I have ever seen.

I really loved the pic of the Ferrari inside the unit, classic.


ATTN: FISCHER
YOU HAVE NO CLASS.

Jun 25, 08 11:33 pm  · 
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Urbanist

no class?

I'm not even sure he has a degree.

Jun 26, 08 6:10 pm  · 
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anybody know who can fabricate exterior turntables like fisher imagined? all that is in sweets are interior turntables. max size found is 140' diameter....

Jun 26, 08 10:38 pm  · 
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Synergy

140' diameter? that is pretty massive, no? is this building supposed to be that large?

Jun 27, 08 9:15 am  · 
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xacto

...isnt this story like a year old...

http://www.realestatejournal.com/propertyreport/architecture/20070412-frangos.html

Jun 27, 08 9:54 am  · 
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le bossman

they wouldn't be going though with it if they hadn't figured all this out. it might turn out to be a laughable novelty or it might completely change the way we think about architectural form and experience. before passing judgement, i would just wait and see what happens. it is also not lost on my that this latest innovation in supertall design is happening, again, outside the west. if this project is successful, this won't be the last of this kind of thing that we've seen.

Jun 27, 08 10:03 am  · 
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Synergy

that is a really good point. I think we often get really caught up in critiquing proposed , in construction or even conceptual projects long before the architect and engineers have had a chance to fully realize their design intent. It's a little like attacking an artists latest painting while she is still painting it.

Jun 27, 08 11:30 am  · 
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le bossman

or he

Jun 27, 08 11:34 am  · 
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Synergy

ahah yeah, i don't like typing "he/she" so I usually just go with she.

Jun 27, 08 11:44 am  · 
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Apurimac

Like I keep saying, I'm down for pushing the limits and everything, but there's just something terribly nouveau riche about this whole thing, or maybe it was just that website that put me off.

Jun 27, 08 11:54 am  · 
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Synergy

ooo nice vocabulary. I think that is a strong critique of all of the Dubai developments, but you have to be careful because it can definetly come across as bitterness and jealously.

When we build monster steel sky scrapers it is innovative and classy, when someone else goes the next step further and produces taller skyskyscrapers or moving ones, then suddenly it is tasteless and cliche'.

Still it is a valid point, where do we draw the line between groundbreaker and forward moving and just plain excessive?

Jun 27, 08 12:01 pm  · 
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Apurimac

There's alot of tasteless skyscrapers going up in Dubai right now that don't move. Look its all new money anyway, I'll be impressed when this goes up.

Jun 27, 08 12:07 pm  · 
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jhooper

This guy reminds me of a disillusioned highschool athlete who holds a press conference to tell everyone he's going to play ball at some school. But then the school finds out and says they've never heard of the kid and it turns out that the whole thing was created by a creative 'agent' who is now nowhere to be found.

Needless to say, I have my doubts of how legit this whole thing is.

Jun 27, 08 12:27 pm  · 
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ff33º


...this is all very familiar

Jun 27, 08 12:37 pm  · 
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idiotwind

in ten years it will seem like a hangover from the eighties and no one will want to pay for maintenance. it's not timeless in my opinion, but still kind of cool.

Jun 27, 08 8:06 pm  · 
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PsyArch

Apparently Fisher's rotating tower goes on site in two weeks

Craptastic

Aug 1, 08 8:24 am  · 
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PsyArch
Aug 1, 08 8:27 am  · 
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brokenfinch

here is the weblink to the project which sort of addresses some issues:

http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/home.html

Aug 1, 08 8:55 am  · 
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