Dynamic Tower Coming to NYC?

A new type of green building may be coming to New York. The Dynamic Tower, an 80-story, 1378-foot residential tower with revolving floors, is planned for Dubai, with possible plans for a similar project in NYC.

According to Italian architect David Fisher, the Dubai project will comprise 80 pre-fabricated apartments that will spin independently of one another on a central column.

The building will have several green features, the most notable being the giant wind turbines mounted horizontally between each floor, which will generate electricity for the tower as well as other nearby buildings. The turbines have been designed to be practically invisible and extremely quiet due to their special shape and the carbon-fiber construction. The horizontal turbines have been designed to eliminate many of the environmental issues associated with vertical installations, such as aesthetic complaints and danger to wildlife, especially birds.

Additional green features will include photovoltaic cells that will be placed on the roof of each rotating floor to produce solar energy. Approximately 20% of each roof will be exposed to the sun. Low-e glass will also be used to prevent heat loss and increase energy efficiency.

Sounds like an innovative project with big potential for increasing the spotlight on green residential building in New York. Let's hope that it gets built, or even if it doesn't, that the proposal generates enough buzz to encourage other architects to think big in green construction!

Shipping Container Condos

You've heard of reduce, reuse, recycle, but a developer in Salt Lake City is taking the idea of "reuse" to new levels. City Center Lofts, a seven-story condominium complex under construction in downtown Salt Lake City, will be constructed largely from shipping containers. Yes, that's right--those big steel rectangular boxes that you see on trains and trucks everywhere are becoming housing.

Designed by shipping container specialist Quik-Build of Bernardsville, N.J., with Cooper Roberts Simonsen Associates as the local architect, the building will house eight residential condo units and an art gallery. It will be constructed of approximately 50 percent recycled content by weight, and will include such green amenities as no- or low-VOC finishes, low-e high-performance windows, on-demand hot-water heaters, bicycle storage, a green roof, and water-efficient landscaping. (Not-so-green features will include garage space for each unit. Not every city has the subway!)

Architects in the emerging field of shipping-container housing believe it will be the first building of its kind in Utah and the tallest such structure in the nation. It is scheduled for completion in March 2009.

Our research also turned up another inspired architectural team whose re-use of shipping containers spans the continents. Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, partners at NYC-based LOT-EK (pronounced low-tech) came up with the innovative idea of building with re-used large industrial objects - including shipping containers, airplane fuselages, tanks, and truck bodies - in the early 90s. The team more recently designed a store for Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing manufacturer, using shipping containers, and that success inspired another developer to bring them in to design a huge retail project in Beijing. Sanlitun South, a 250,000-square-foot, four-story building, incorporates 151 shipping containers. They are also working on an 11,000-square-foot, three-story mobile shipping-container building entirely for Puma. This building, which will contain three stores, offices, a lounge/bar, and several open spaces, will open in Alicante, Spain in early September and then travel around the world for two years. It will be the first building that is both completely mobile and completely made out of containers.