Rotating Solar-Powered Skyscraper

PieEye writes "Wired is pointing out a recent Gear Factor blog entry that highlights a new skyscraper in the works which will be solar-powered, and what's more will rotate with the sun. From the article: 'The completed tower will offer 200 expensive apartments for people who want to spend lots of money to screw up their circadian rhythm. Singh said they want to build many more such towers, with one for every time zone.'"

Great

[afaik_ianal (918433)]

So now I can get home from work an hour early and can catch my neighbour's wife having an affair.

But seriously: How exactly is a rotating building meant to mess up one's circadian rhythm [wikipedia.org]? Does the blogger think this building is rigged up to do a lap of the Earth each day? It's spinning on the spot!

Finally, why link to a crappy blog entry complete with typos and irrelevant BS, when you could link directly to the article [gulfnews.com]?

Re:Great

[martin-boundary (547041)]

So now I can get home from work an hour early and can catch my neighbour's wife having an affair.

No need to leave your desk. If your workplace is like mine, they probably have a deal with some internet company which regularly sends me photos of my nextdoor neighbour and her antics per email. Don't know the name of the company, but I think it's foreign or something because most of the other words they write in those emails look like gibberish to me.

Re:Great, Feng Shui

[by Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the Circadian Rythm but I know it would really screw up my Feng Shui.. Unless the rooms counter-rotated...

Perpetual Shadow

[maglor_83 (856254)]

Give me an apartment in perpetual shadow. No more glare on the TV!

Re:

[WormholeFiend (674934)]

Gimme an apartment on the opposite side. I'll grow teh pot, and go smoke it with you while playing video games on your giant flatscreen HDTV

Re:Perpetual Shadow

[Surt (22457)]

http://www.californiareport.org/domains/california report/ [californiareport.org]
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2003482836_marijuana18.html [nwsource.com]

Yes.

With a lowball estimate of $1600/pound, presumably you'd need only grow something like 5 pounds per month to cover your rent and utilities and whatnot.

The problem of course, is that if the windows are see-through for maximum sunlight, you have issues with the police/neighbors being able to notice.

Re:

[mrchaotica (681592)]

I mostly asked as a joke, but thanks anyway!

The problem of course, is that if the windows are see-through for maximum sunlight, you have issues with the police/neighbors being able to notice.

Only police in a helicopter, if you're on one of the upper floors.

Re:Sorry - you're a bit new, I assume.

[indifferent children (842621)]

Yes, the GP forgot the all-important: IANAMG disclaimer.

Re:

[smithmc (451373)]

  Your answer, without any apparent personal experience, is somewhat laughable

No, but your spouting off in a public forum about your illegal drug activities is somewhat laughable. As if dealing drugs, even if (as far as I'm concerned) it ought to be legal, is something to get arrogant and uptight about.

Re:

[x2A (858210)]

I know plenty of people who smoke it who are perfectly coherent, and plenty of people who don't who aren't. Weed doesn't make people stupid, but it can be another thing that can help create complacency in ignorance as that post seemed to demonstrate. But dude, your statements on "smoking pot" demonstrate ignorance on your part. Just because something can be involved in causing harm doesn't mean that it's the cause of the harm, rather than just the tool the person decides to use to achieve what they wanna be

Re:

[Vengeance (46019)]

Sometimes the coherent ones are smart enough to keep quiet about it, in this paranoid society.

And that's all I have to say on this topic.

Re:

[x2A (858210)]

"Who's going to want to live on weekends-dark section?"

Sounds good to me, after a long party and not getting to bed until early hours of the... afternoon, the sun can be damn annoying :-)

for cheapskates only

[Schlemphfer (556732)]

Rotating skyscapers, for the sake of capturing more sunlight, is so plebian and low-tech. The truly rich build skyscrapers that revolve around the earth, so they're constantly in sunlight.

Re:for cheapskates only

[Duhavid (677874)]

Thats called a satellite.

Re:for cheapskates only

[bahstid (927038)]

I get the feeling that you are going to be the first of a long line of people missing the point, so I thought I'd jump in here... As I understand it, the tower doesn't rotate in order to get more sunlight; it rotates because rotating a building is a cool thing to do. Constantly changing views and all that...

The solar power part is a way to do this without condeming the tennants to a lifetime of mad energy bills.

Interstructure

[camperdave (969942)]

I hope it rotates only 180 degrees (or less) then rotates back. Rigging plumbing, sewage, power, cable, phone, etc for full 360 degree rotation will be tricky.

Re:Interstructure

[mrchaotica (681592)]

You could build it in sections stacked on top of each other, with each section able to rotate ±30 degrees or so, then (since the bottom section would be fixed), each next higher section would have a greater cumulative maximum angle. This could then be an extra added benefit to the more expensive upper units, because they'd have more variety in the view.

Of course, the other thing you could do is just put all the mechanical stuff in a non-rotating center column, which would make a heck of a lot more sense anyway because you've got to have at least one set of stairs for the fire escape, and putting that in the rotating part seems pretty stupid...

Re:

[blincoln (592401)]

Rigging plumbing, sewage, power, cable, phone, etc for full 360 degree rotation will be tricky.

Anything electrical is easy. Just use a bunch of ring-shaped conductors around the axis of rotation.

I imagine liquid wouldn't be *that* much harder. Have the input water come in at the top of the building and the sewage come out the bottom, with one big pipe connector on each end that runs through the axis of rotation. Because the water is only going one way (down), you don't need a perfect seal, just that the bot

Re:

[Surt (22457)]

I don't see much of a need for a seal at all: run all your plumbing down hill in a pipe that extends into a gap in the central column, have that gap slope downhill into collector tubes. I guess you might need to flush that once in a while.

Re:

[ookabooka (731013)]

I hope it rotates only 180 degrees (or less) then rotates back. Rigging plumbing, sewage, power, cable, phone, etc for full 360 degree rotation will be tricky.

Why not just go wireless? It's the wave of the future ya know.

Re:Interstructure

[psxman (925240)]

Wireless sewage? I believe that's called a diaper.

Pfft.

[Somatic (888514)]

I had like 50 of those in Sim City 2000, /yawn.

Re:for cheapskates only

[moosesocks (264553)]

Hah, the TRULY rich build a building with sufficient mass such that the Earth revolves around the building!

Eh. This wouldn't be entirely necessary, as the elite classes of the world are already under the impression that the earth revolves around them.

The world *does* revolve round the rich.

[Colin Smith (2679)]

For example, the Federal Reserve is made up of a bunch of private banks. These banks create money out of nothing and loan it to the US government at currently 5.25% interest rate. The government spends the money and then taxes the people to eventually pay it back. The US citizens are taxed to pay money to a bunch of private banks interest on money which they created out of nothing. Essentially the whole of the US population is working for the member (privately owned) banks of the Federal Reserve.

Guess who o

Re:

[smithmc (451373)]

  Before oil was discovered in Dubai about what, 35 years ago?, they were herding camels and trading rugs.

Dubai [wikipedia.org] is not an oil-rich place; only 6% of its GDP comes from oil. Dubai is rich because of the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone [wikipedia.org].

One for every timezone, eh?

[Bananatree3 (872975)]

I am sure downtown Nome, Alaska [city-data.com] would absolutely LOVE a 50 story skyscraper next to the General Store.

Energy cost?

[Kamineko (851857)]

With any luck, the power generated by this scheme will almost offset the energy cost of the rotation...

Re:

[afaik_ianal (918433)]

That's the point. It is meant to rotate on the energy it captures. It's not meant to be a particularly "green" solution - they're just trying not to be completely anti-green.

FTFA:

Project engineers say the Dh400 million Time Residences tower in the City of Arabia master development will turn through 360 degrees, its rotation mechanism driven by stored solar energy.

wait a sec...

[David_Shultz (750615)]

Don't you hate that time of day when the sun is shining right into your apartment/living room, and putting glare on your monitor/tv? Isn't this going to be a problem for those apartments facing the sun (and turning along with it)?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article, you'll find it completes a rotation in a week, not a single day. As such, the building does not track the sun, and no part of it will be in this situation.

Sense of Direction More Likely to be Affected

[DumbSwede (521261)]

I suspect that people working in this building day after day may find their sense of direction diminished in local surroundings. I once lived in a trailer that had to be moved. The 90 degree change in orientation grossly affected my navigation sense for months.

Re:Sense of Direction More Likely to be Affected

[chris_eineke (634570)]

The 90 degree change in orientation grossly affected my navigation sense for months.

Lesson learned: don't park your trailer upright.

And the point is?

[necro81 (917438)]

Building a rotating tower is neat and all - reminds me of those roundiround restaurants that seemed so cool in the 70s and 80s - but wouldn't all that effort be better spent on:

* Building a more energy efficient living complex that uses various technologies to reduce resource consumption,
* Building a real solar farm (the vertical walls of a tower aren't well suited to solar collection, especially in Dubai),
* Creating affordable living space without an "It's solar! Far out, man!" premium?

Re:

[camperdave (969942)]

Hmm... Perhaps the next generation of these towers will be wind powered, like those roadside signs that turn in the wind. Why bother with one rotation per day when you could get several dozen per minute in a stiff breeze.

It actually rotates 360 deg over 7 days

[MushMouth (5650)]

Whoever wrote the blurb, didn't bother to read the original article. This doesn't rotate to keep certain apartments in the sun, it rotates to allow all apartments to have the same view, albeit on different days.

Re:

[Nutty_Irishman (729030)]

On the other hand, that would make it a lot tougher for "observers to use the building as a fully functioning time piece" using those "12 o'clock markings on the ground and the podium." The blurb and the original article are a bit spotty, unfortunately. One quote suggests the tower will move at 5mm/second, which means it almost certainly turns 360 degrees per day, just like a 24-hour timepiece's hour hand. (Although I suppose it could turn twice per day...)

I had to go digging to find out what is correct. The 5mm per second makes sense on a per day basis(140x140 meter footprint vs. 1000x1000 meter footprint), but this article seems to suggest a per week basis: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1773 432006 [scotsman.com]

Twenty small electric engines will turn the building a few degrees each hour.

Which would be on a week basis. They also mention specifically that it will be on a week basis in this article as well (something that was said in the previous article). Perhaps the engineer (who was quoted for both the 5mm per second and few

What about the beds?

[dino213b (949816)]

For all the people who care about which way their heads, feet, et al face during sleep, will they now be in a spiritual predicament? In other words, will they also need to get rotating beds that would counteract the rotation of the building?

Re:

[Dunbal (464142)]

their "aim" at Mecca cannot be more seriously affected than the inherent inaccuracy of pointing precisely toward Mecca usually.

Hmm, that brings to mind the following question - what is the acceptable error when aiming prayers at Mecca? +/- 2 degrees? 5 degrees? 10? And what happens if the "aim" is off? The prayers work? Or fail to work? Or the praying party instantly has a spot reserved in Hell? Is the effectiveness of the prayer or punishment directly proportional to the degree of er

Services?

[redphive (175243)]

I have to stop and think how things such as TV, Telephone, power, water and sewer are 'plumbed' into each suite. That would have to be an interesting problem to solve.

Sponsored by the local cable TV franchise

[Sloppy (14984)]

I guess directional antennas will have to rotate in the opposite direction.

Suite Vollard - completed in 2001

[rednaxel (532554)]

Suite Vollard [emporis.com] was the first rotating tower of the world, however it's not solar powered. Here's some facts (excerpts from the link):

- This building is the only one of its kind in the world, as each of the 11 apartments can rotate 360.
- Each apartment can spin individually in any direction. One rotation takes a full hour.
- The facades are composed of double sheets of glass, in different colors (blue, gold, and silver) on different floors. This gives a spectacular effect as the floors turn in different directions.
- The apartment rings rotate around a static core used for building services, utilities, and all areas which require plumbing.
- Suite Vollard was a case study for more than 30 companies in Brazil and one from Germany.
- Each apartment was sold for approximately R$ 400,000.00 ($US 300,000.00).
- The first two floors of the building are an Executive Center.

It's 2:37 PM. Which way is Mecca?

[santiago (42242)]

I could see devout Muslims having difficulty orienting themselves correctly at prayer time, particularly given that the times change each day, so it's not in a constant direction relative to your apartment at each appointed period.

Where to start?

[martyb (196687)]

From: original article [gulfnews.com]

Dubai's Kulkarni QS will manage the project, while the task of rotating an 80,000 tonne tower through 360 degrees over a seven day period has been handed to Nick Cooper, managing director of Bennett Associates, the British engineer who designed the drill machine that bored the English Channel Tunnel.

Cooper said state of the art bearing systems at several points in the tower will allow a power plant to rotate the base of the tower at 5mm per second using only 21 electic kettles' worth of solar power.

1. Since it will take a full week for a complete revolution, that means that a given view indicates both the day of week AND the time of day. Think of enjoying the view at your neighbor's home and getting all confused as to what day/time it is. :O

2. This will make for an interesting exercise in real estate law. Said apartment, starting at the central elevator shaft on the 50th floor and heading 100 feet due east, no, wait. That's east-north-east. Man, this is going to take FOREVER! But seriously, has anyone seen a property deed for something like this?

3. "only 21 electic kettles"
   electic [reference.com]
   eclectic [reference.com]
   electric [reference.com]

   (insert witty comment here about tea parties and electic electric kettle selection. :^)

4. Note to other posters: I have heard of rotating restaurants and/or observation decks - this is not an utterly new concept. So, getting the utilities (water, sewer, electric, etc.) to the residents is a matter of scaling past solutions.

5. Lastly: I admire their interest in getting something as immense as a WHOLE SKYSCRAPER to rotate, continuously, for years on end. I just hope they'll be able to get their hands on a good supply of lubricant. <grin>

This is the second one in Dubai

[Animats (122034)]

This is the second rotating tower in Dubai. The first one [waleg.com] has a 5 story stack of rotating penthouses, which rotate independently. At the top is a single "villa", which also rotates. It also has a car lift and three parking spaces.

Dubai is having an insane skyscraper boom. 205 high rise buildings completed, 333 under construction. (Los Angeles: 465 completed, 11 under construction.) Not because of space constraints. There's plenty of open desert nearby. It's ego, enthusiasm, and money.

Some people have some wierd ideas about this

[gurps_npc (621217)]

1) The building does NOT keep one side at the sun all the time.

It rotates a little bit all the time, giving everyone a changing view. The solar powered bit is on the ROOF, not the side.

2) The amount of power needed to rotate the building, assuming it is round, is fairly low. You are just paying for the friction, which unless you are a fool, is almost all on the ground floor, where it meets the non-rotating base. There is no 'core' that does not rotate, - that would just create more problems, starting with increased friction.

3) New York City (and many other major cities) has several buildings with a rotating top floor that does this already. They usually contain restaurants, complete with full water and electricity.

4) Electrical hookups are simple. They work fine on a brush contact, again only on the BOTTOM floor.

5) Sewer hookups are also simple. In the bottom floor, there is a large pipe. Beneath the pipe is a gigantic inverse ring, that funnels to a pipe. It does not matter that most of the time the inverse ring is open, stuff falls down into it.

6) The only problem is the water intake, to get water to the building. This can most easily be done in the center of the building, with a pipe connection that is water tight, but low friction seal, allowing rotation. The problem factor is keeping friction down, not the water tight + allowing rotation.

Re:

[2short (466733)]

Well, again, the one existing "whole building" rotator I've heard about actually had an outside theat rotated around a non-rotating core. Each floor was a single apartment whose kitchen, bathroom, and access to the elevator/stairs were in the non-rotating middle. Do you know of a building where the whole thing actually roatates, or are you speculating?
I'm just curious; not trying to run down speculating. My own speculation is that a sufficiently reliable rotating water hookup is harder than you think. F

Re:I am the only one ...

[ricree (969643)]

Come on, this is Slashdot. You're the only one who's even read the article.

Re:I am the only one ...

[MrAnnoyanceToYou (654053)]

I read Slashdot for the pictures. And that's a picture of one ugly building.

Re:

[dangitman (862676)]

If they just rigged the building with light pipes, it wouldn't have to rotate to keep "facing" the Sun.

That wouldn't solve the problem of people wanting to have access to the "best view" out of their window.

What an incredible waste of energy to rotate the building, in the name of solar power.

It's not being done in the name of solar power. It's being done in the name of property values, and having a trendy apartment with good views.

39 timezones

[splutty (43475)]

There are about 39 time zones instead of 24 (as popularly believed). This is due to fractional hour offsets and zones with offsets larger than 12 hours near the International Date Line. Some micronations may use offsets that are not recognized by all authorities.

(That's from the wikipedia on timezones)