Are rotating buildings pure folly or the future of architecture? In design, rotation is used to solve problems that stationary buildings can’t resolve, offering flexible, ever-changing interior space and a constantly-updated view.
Dubai is a hot house for taking design to excess. From the world’s tallest building to the world’s largest mall and the world’s largest indoor snow park, taste is synonymous with hyperbole. Last year, the country saw the unveiling of ambitious plans to build a 420-metre ‘shape shifting’ tower. The 80-storey Dynamic Tower by New York-based architect David Fisher is described as “the world’s first building in motion”.
Constructed from pre-fab units, every storey would be able to rotate independently, powered by wind turbines positioned between each floor. These wind turbines would give the building the ability to generate electricity for itself as well as for other buildings nearby, making it the first building designed to be self-powered.
"You can adjust the shape the way you like every given moment," Fisher said. "It's not a piece of architecture somebody designed today and that's it. It remains forever. It's designed by life, shaped by time.”
Fisher would replace the traditional brick-on-brick building methods by using pre-fabricated parts. Each storey could be built in just seven days, resulting in cleaner building methods. And, with 23 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions coming from the building industry, such a trend in this hemisphere could be good news for Australia’s construction sector.
Just 600 people on an assembly site and 80 technicians on the construction site would be needed to build the tower, compared with about 2,000 workers for a traditional project of a comparable scale, Fisher said.
However, spatial awareness in environmental building does always come with the brash exaggeration of Dubai design. Passive solar design uses the scientific combination of climatology, thermodynamics (particularly heat transfer) and human thermal comfort. The site and location are ultimately important, as is the prevailing climate, design and construction, solar orientation, placement of glazing and shading and the incorporation of thermal mass.
Briabane’s Spring Hill Enviro-Cottage Project “Enviro-Cottage” Project aims to revitalise a traditional Queensland worker’s cottage in Spring Hill, Brisbane. The objective is to turn one of Brisbane’s oldest traditional residential properties into a showcase of sustainable development and environmentally friendly living, using passive solar design.
The architect Steendyk had to spend time on site to note how the sun moved across the property during the day and through the seasons, and from where prevailing winds and breezes come from.
The project is currently finalising concepts and designs so that the approval process and engagement with the Local Council authorities can begin. The design includes a rear pavilion that reduces the existing building depth and allows for the penetration of northern sun into the central private courtyard. The western aspects are protected from the afternoon sun by use of fencing, masonry, no glazing, and perforated feature metal sheeting. This broad design concept (cut and separate, rather than simply lift and extend) maximises the passive solar function and efficiency of the entire dwelling, particularly the new living spaces. Cross ventilation, shading, sun control, internal heat control and water efficiency and re-use have all been catered to, to the maximum possible on this site.
