I dont think that they could engineer this.

The various shapes give very different wind profiles.

The helical sturcture could react very differently to wind when compared to the random structure on the right.

Wouldnt this be a problem?

See Kurokawa's Capsule Building in Tokyo for an example of pre-fab tower construction. The Metabolist movement in the 60s and 70s proposed similar ideasof self-containment, limitless expansion via the building block unit, or cell, and cutting edge technologies that made living above and away from the natural earth not only possible but preferable. It was technology, or the lack thereof, that ultimately doomed their experiments. Are we there yet? I don't know, but its exciting to see the latest attempts....although I agree that this one in particular appears far fetched due to the rotating bits...

so they take a MW scale turbine and sandwich it between the floors of the building to generate power?

This then generates "40 mW minimum" and "ten times more power than the building consumes"...

Pipedreams

The power generated by turbines is proportional to their area and to the wind speed cubed. If you could easily power a 17 story skyscraper with the wind incident in a couple of feet between floors, one or two big turbines on the roof would certainly do the trick.

If you look at the size of commercial turbines, there is obviously a serious math error or an intentional deception at work here.

I can't imagine what the cost will be to maintain such a building, with all of the moving parts.

It seems to me the spinning floor aspect is a bit over the top, at this point in time. Involving wind turbines, within the building structure, will be a big step all by itself.

Who knows though. If they can do it well, more power to them.

Would there be a problem with motion sickness of the people in the building?

Huh, funny. I was reading this post expecting actual, oh, I dunno, evidence or legitimate analysis explaining why this project was infeasible. Of course, how silly of me, I forgot that "Boy, I don't think this could be done," is all that is needed. Neither the post nor the comments has any real articulation of why this can't be done.

I love how bold, unwarranted assertions somehow constitute "intelligent and civil" comments.

I just hope that the investors in this building -- who have surely made their millions by being constantly fooled by "pipedream" technologies, such as the ones that built the current Dubai skyline -- are lucky enough to stumble across these comments and realize the error of their ways.

Look at Dubai's skyline, with a building under construction that is the size of the former twin towers stacked on top of eachother.

This is possible, but at what cost?

No LaLiberte, they made their money sucking black goo out of the ground and getting stupid Westerners to pay vast sums to set it on fire...

See how most anything sounds stupid when you oversimplify it?

But as I'm one of the simpletons who thinks this is silly and unecessary (a few turbines on the roof sounds far more sensible to me) how does one find ones apartment in high winds? Getting that key in the door might be difficult when you apartment is moving away from your position in the cylinder. And to what end? Aesthetics?

So modular construction aside, we had best learn to put function above form, otherwise we might end up building incredibly expensive buildings (or planes or cars or boats...) that use far more material and energy to construct than doing in a simple, plain manner might, and for no reason at all other than it was pretty...

And that would be stupid, wouldn't it?

@Anonymous-- Legitimate analysis explaining why this project is infeasible:

The designer, David Fisher, makes more detailed claims here: http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/dubai-project.htm

Judging by the drawings of his tower (http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/schema/schema_big.htm), it's about 300 x 50 m. Ignoring the narrowing of the tower as it rises, roughly 20% of the area is devoted to wind turbines. That's around 15000 x 0.2 = 3000 m^2.

He claims that the average wind speed in Dubai is 16 km/h, or 4.4 m/s.

Assuming a Rayleigh distribution for the wind speed, the average power available as kinetic energy in the wind is (6/pi) * 0.5 * (density of air) * area * (average velocity)^3.

The density of air is 1.2 kg/m^3.

That's (6/3.14) * 0.5 * 1.2 * 3000 * (4.4^3) = 290 kW. If the wind turbines were 30% efficient, which would be pretty good for a vertical axis turbine stuck in a building, the yield would be 100 kW.

This ignores the narrowing of the building, the lack of wind near the ground, and obstruction from other buildings.

The building has around 50 m * 50 m * 60 floors = 150000 m^2 of floor space, so the areal power density is about 0.67 W/m^2.

To meet the claims of a 10x ratio between energy generated and used, the building can budget 67 mW/m^2. That might be enough to light a single LED in each room.

Oh, and the average temperature in Dubai is 27 C. I guess they can run the air conditioning when all the LEDs are off.

I, for one, will suspend judgment until I either see how it turns out or see the way the numbers were arrived at.

And for the record, Dubai no longer makes its money from oil. Due to good planning on the part of national leaders who realized they only had a couple of good decades of oil production left, they switched to a different industry: tourism. Oil is now a small part of the economy, which is why they are able to acquire the kinds of wealth necessary to do new things like experiment with cool buildings (or build custom islands- not everything they do is a good idea).

I've watched the first 20 seconds of the video so far... "Rather pretentious" is an understatement... lol...

hmmmm have you really look into this project?

It seem to me some of you mistook wind turbines sandwiched between the floors with floors used as wind turbines...
My understanding is that the floors will move at the will of the inhabitant, to maximize sunlight in the room they are currently using for example.

For the people prefering 2 wind turbines at the rooftop, note that the inhabitat articles says the rooftop is already occupied by solar panels.
So in fact sandwiching wind turbines in between floor open up the rooftop for other green uses (we could also have imagined a green roof) plus it is a preventing step to people always critizing wind turbines as eyesores :)

The last factor of course is the dream factor, 2 wind turbines will not sparkle anyone imagination these days (even though it should since it stills pretty far from being a standard building feature) but a building like that will, and hopefully will emulate others to use wind power in there building one way or another!

Also seems that this building was originally intended for Chicago, "the Wind city", which was maybe a more appropriate environment for it, and maybe where the little inflated energy production computation was based on.

Well, am I the only one that actually thinks they have some great ideas? First of all - turbines between floors get the added bonus of increased windspeed (because wind blocked by the floors themselves is partially deflected, but partially funneled through the floors)
Rotating aspect seems to be mainly due to the manufacturing process, but they will just keep the feature to add functionality. this can come in handy with passive solar heating during winter as well. Also, the shape of the floors can greatly improve the performance of the wind turbines( if they are drag type, then block the wind from the returning blade and funnel it to downwind blade). The assembly process is genius. They build ships that way (CAD-designed modules with lasercut precision are prebuilt and then welded together in dry-docks) - so there is no need why they cant use the same technology for buildings.
My main concer is the way they handle elevators and stairs. I suppose they are in the middle column and doors open in a circular corridor. But still, I would definitely get disorientated:) and we come to the rotation itself - similar things have been done with rotating platforms in TV-towers. But the cost seems to be the major issue - bearing and gearing for entire floor times 78? That is a lot of money - even when mass produced. Can the dynamics make the investment worth it during the lifespan? What about maintenance?
Anyway, best of luck to the project. Innovation is hard and expencive, but if they pull it off and it has the economical and environmental benefits they claim, then it is indeed excellent news.

If it happens, it will happen in Dubai. Amazing what you can do when transportation fuel costs 70 cents a gallon and you can hire thousands of workers from other poorer countries and pay them little to build your country.

The dynamic moving parts of this is not the exciting part; it's the ability to add 1 floor every 3 days and complete buildings of this size in greatly reduced amounts of time (and therefore cost). Nearly completed components built off site and then assembled on site is very efficient.

Ofcourse it's possible to engineer this. It's actually quite simple and completely brilliant really. I love the idea. The first one will have have heaps of problems from which the solutions will be derived. It's called design evolution.

Some things that will be problematic.
1. Noise levels for the inhabitants, especially at night
2. Large-scale Maintenance
3. Resistance from power utilities to allow sale of power to the grid.
4. Seismic considerations

"If you think you can, you are right, and if you think you can't you are also right."

- Henry Ford.

People laughed at him for claiming every family would own one.

What's often more interesting to observe than technical data or analysis, is the human element. Here, we notice that most everyone is an expert of some sort, with only one entry admitting that the writer doesn't "think" the project is feasible. And of course, the usual fact-monitor patiently explaining to the children the difference between unwarranted assertions and "intelligent and civil" comments.

Will the building function as it's supposed to? I don't care.

WOwwwwwwwww
what a art of Construction.
I am glad to write this that I am living in this ERA

love the idea. The first one will have have heaps of problems from which the solutions will be derived. It's called design evolution.

Some things that will be problematic.
1. Noise levels for the inhabitants, especially at night
2. Large-scale Maintenance
3. Resistance from power utilities to allow sale of power to the grid.
4. Seismic considerations

if they are all singular rooms, then wont people fight to get the good view lol i mean everyone will want to see the sunset but their is no way the building will just become flat and all the rooms will be on one side

what if another development constructs another tower directly up wind from this tower? hmmm..