I wonder how they've handled extremes like hurricanes and windless days (weeks?). If they don't regulate the velocity, stepping from the spinning room to the stationary core might be a little bit dangerous.

uh huh. you install the plumbing.

hmmm...sounds less like a sandwich and more like a shish-kebab to me (with that "concrete core" being the skewer, of course).

...and what nonsense is it to come up with such a "green" proposition as fitting a building with wind turbines, then wasting much of that green power on something ridiculous like rotating segments of a building.

If only I was so wealthy as to be able to spend some of my money on an apartment in such a building, and some more of my money on a man-made private island (how many such projects are in the works around Dubai?).

Best I can hope for is that one day I'll own a house, and it'll have a pool, and I can make a little island out of inflatable rafts. And next to the pool, I'll have a barbecue with a roasting spit that rotates when I crank it. Oooooh, the luxury!

@pk
yeah well most office bulidings dont really have plumbing, and for the bathrooms... well that could turn into a game 10 points for a parked car, 40 if its moving and 100 for a person.

I want to be the first one to ride the elevator to the top. I imagine it would be like an icecube in a huge blender of margaritas.

WTF? I just don't get it. It looks like a nausiating place to work.

This will bring office sex back! yay!

"The tower is based around a concrete center core, with each floor spinning like an individual wind turbine"

I believe the wind turbines are between each floor, not the actual floors.

This is great if it works and if people actually go for it. Unfortunately it looks like half of the square footage needs to be given up in exchange for the power generation.

I read the Chicago Tribune article, this guy is serious. Madness. Madness I tell you.

The plumbing and the lifts should be interesting.

The architect has some very slick and big ball to want to twist his vertical stick like that.

There's actually a rotating house in Southern California (San Diego, I think) that was designed by the owner. He has used magnets to resolve the problem of getting electricity from the central, stationary, core to the outer parts of the house. I believe the elevator and restrooms are at the center, but can't swear to that. I read an article about it a year or so ago.

Man! Dubai is an amazing city. They're currently building the world's tallest building. It's called Burj Dubai. Also, I think they have the tallest hotel thats shaped like a boat's sail. I think its called Burj al arab Dubai. On top of that, Dubai is home to the coolest islands I know of. They're shaped like palm trees. You can actually see it on google earth. There are also these groups of islands that depict the earth itself. If you were rich enough, you could say that you own australia. And as if I hadn't said enough, Dubai is home to the largest indoor ski slope. Its the only indoor ski slope with either a black or double black diamond ski slope. The whole thing is part of this giant mall. But I'm not sure if its the biggest mall in the world. I hope one day I'll be able to visit Dubai. May be when I'm done getting my masters in architecture.

beyond stupid.

It doesn't seem realistic for the floors to rotate that quickly. Before I saw the video, I was thinking this could be an intelligent way to store energy if the floors were rotating very slowly. At the current speed, however, it seems like everything would need to be bolted to the floor to survive the G-force issues. Can anyone see a way around this problem?

Well, if it works, why not? There are people of all kinds and there will be enough of a certain kind to live in that tower, I bet.

ok, i bet that only the very outside rotates and the part where the people are at does not rotate

How the hell are they going to connect the utilities? And It'll be really sickening spinning randomly all day. I think it's a terrible idea. It's a nice design, but should never ever see the light of day.

"In the future, there's computers" !!!!

I think this guy has gotten a little too close to the future!!!

or, a not crazy idea... put turbines between all the floors, but dont connect them to the floors, so they stay stationary...

Destian - you don't have to give up half of the square footage for the turbines... They found this ingenous solution.

In summation: "I didn't think of it, can't afford to live there, can't picture how it works, so therefore it's stupid." Hmmm, one could almost say that about the PC, the Cell phone, the internal combustion engine -- pretty much everything since the telegraph. For that matter, how many of you can actually describe how the telegraph works? Come on people, think about everything that's happened in just the last 30 years, and then kick youselves in the ass for being such luddites. And being Giz readers, you should actually know better. Smarten up before I get my rant on....

This reminds me of my childhood memories on the tire swing. I remember throwing up once I got off it, then having to deal with vertigo the rest of the day.

Why is this building in the middle of the ocean? Isn't that inconvenient?

@ Mandatory
Immense props there.

Just because something is revolutionary and practically unimaginable doesn't make it stupid. Assuming there is a way to prevent motion sickness this may be one of the biggest marvels of this decade. And depending on the application of the technology, this could change the outlook of the rest of the century. Or so I guess at least.

Woohoo, oil money! Why not just slap a bunch of real wind turbines on the outside of the building?

And like this wouldn't be distracting as hell for the people with the window views.

and as far as motion sickness goes, i'm pretty sure it won't spin that fast.

So I guess they have to build the elevator and the stairs in the center of the concrete core?

Jenga!

In Buildings with concrete cores the lifts and toilets, main lines for power, data, fire escapes etc are all enclosed in the core. I don't think the core itself is not proposed to rotate.
If you've been to a "rotating" restaurant it's kinda similar in principle.. only it's a bitch to find the toilets because you've moved somewhere else.

Uh...if giving half that buildings total volume over to energy production is enough to power ten regular buildings of the same size, why not go balls to wall and give it over ENTIRELY to energy production and power 20 buildings instead? Or just retrofit one tenth of each building with this technology so that they become self sufficient (though I do realize, THAT poses many more engineering challenges than the former...)?

I also read that in Dubai... the have so called "slave labor"... when people go there looking for work.. they steal their passports and keep them prisoners in that place... and I remember reading stories of human rights violations... but mostly, filipino people were being taken advantage of... I read this a couple of years ago... does any one else remember reading anything about this??? If I find that article again, I'll post the link...

Sounds unsafe having all those floors separated. If one falls, it and each lower floor have space to accelerate before compacting on the next floor down. Think WTC but with families sleeping.

wtf? you mean it's actually gonna be built? not some weird-ass design school "concept" that doesn't make sense in the real world, and even less sense on paper?

Wow... When the wind blows, nuts to whoever wants an ocean view office.

The video was trippy!!

@OddManOut
Am with you on this one...why not have a regular structure with a concrete core on the roof and then use that to power the entire building.

I'm wonder... where are stairs? (in case elevator is not operational like in case of fire). And how plumbing is made?

*coughfountainheadcough*

I think it's extremely unlikely that this would work. The video is simply fanciful. Unless the structure were extremely light and a completely different shape (say, like an "eggbeater" vertical turbine) I don't expect it'd turn more than a few times an hour at most. Sticking blades nicely shielded from the elements between two large flat surfaces is never going to move a building because most of the air will simply bounce off the flat surfaces and that which does get into the gap between floors will be massively slowed down by friction.

Two points for you disbelieving pseudo-gizmos. First, it doesn't need to turn fast enough to be motion-sickness inducing since the momentum of such a huge mass (each floor) turning at even 5 degrees per minute would be plenty of energy for the turbines to harness... so no, it won't turn as fast as you saw in the video (use the moon and the clouds' movement as a time reference). Second, I don't think they're aiming to harness energy from the wind that goes down/up, something tells me that wind moving perpendicularly to the building is what they're interested in, and from the picture, it doesn't look like anything is obstructing the path in that direction.

Why in the video where some of the floors spinning a different direction?

Even "a few times an hour" for something with that mass is going to produce some tangible energy.

How would you get in the front door? What with it spinning and all...

In case anyone didn't read the article in the Chicago Tribune about this building here are some answers to some comments. The reason for it was because rooms with a view sell better than those without. Lake/Ocean views versus city, this way every room is both and will have a good view at some point.

The upper floors would be sold as whole floor condos and the spinning of those would be controlled by the tenants of each floor individually. The lower floors would be divided into multiple condos and those would be controlled by the building maintenance and at it's fastest spin once every 3 hours.

Dubai has the most ridiculously cool buildings, but...all those big oil-producing countries have too much money and not enough of an economy.

I'd never visit the UAE or Saudi Arabia. Having to cover my head and not go anywhere without a wali - ugh.

"Even "a few times an hour" for something with that mass is going to produce some tangible energy."

To be honest I think even that is a massive overestimate. Perhaps it might move at all a few times a day- this is more of a wind vane than a turbine. Yes, it might be possible to produce /some/ usable energy, but there comes a limit when the low-level and infrequent supply of this energy makes it of little use (c.f. wave power which also has this problem, though I'd say was a much more realistic idea than spinning buildings!). 10 buildings worth of energy? No chance.

What about the fact that the wind that goes around big buildings is mostly blowing vertically, not horizontally? Not to mention that the cost of implementing this idea would far outweigh the benefits for the next 50-75 years. (and by that I mean: that is how long it would take to recoup your building costs with energy savings)

And you know what? For a miniscule fraction of the cost of implementing this rediculous idea, you could build a nuclear plant that could power an entire county, not just 20 buildings.

I wouldn't want to be the poor bastard sitting out on the swing stage trying to wash the windows.

I wonder how long if built the building could realistically last before becoming to expensive to maintain. I imagine all those moving parts on a massive scale = a hell of a lot of stress and strain on the structure

@Jeff_McAwesome - way to think green..

Also why do so many commenters repeat the same questions? i.e. about the plumbing? especially after they've been answered already! Read - then post!

WOW - I just discovered that a lot of Gizmodo readers are engineers and architects... and seem to know what is going to work and what is not when it comes to building designs...just by looking at a video.

I could pretend that this bit of information is enough for me to make judgement and try to prove myself smarter than city planners in Dubai and Chicago.

But since I'm NOT an architect and I haven't been privy to plans I would only make a of myself by saying this was dumb idea.

Dubai is an amazing place! Every time I visited there was another first in engineering. This would be a cool place to work cause the scenery would change slowly. Plus, if you wanted to commit suicide you would just have to open a service door to the turbine props, it's better that way so you don't land on a pedestrian.