Dubai Plans 'Moving' Skyscraper

These guys can't give their money away fast enough.

Damnit, I thought it was going to say that the building would be swaying side to side to make it a harder target

Presumably each floor must be owned by an individual else the would be arguments about who faced which direction...It could be handy to rotate with the seasons.

Hi Del,

I like this idea, at least this architect thinks fowards and not like the idiots who built the centre of Birminham in 1960s and 70s.

Spencer.

One thing puzzles me and that is the structural strength.

If you loose the connections at the outside of the building and have only a post so to speak in the middle, that post will have to mighty big and out of high strength steel to keep the tower up. I sure hope they have made their structural calculations before building commences.

You don't necessarily lose all connection on the outside, it can be running on bearings which will take some load. The centre column could just provide the axis of rotation....think of a pile of washers located on a central shaft.

Del

Some of the simulations I've seen circulating the web for this concept seem a bit too fluid to me, and so I'm a skeptic. - april05

The requirements for connecting services, such as telephone, power, sewerage, water are going to be very complex.

In all of the idiocy with the design, and the squandering of natural resources, for the sheiks to make a statement before their oil runs out, I am reminded of a children's story, which was modified and updated into a short film to teach children:

Live action, UK, 2003

Director: Phill Traill

Language: No dialogue

Colour: Colour

Running Time: 6 minutes

Short synopsis

A man finds a large rope hanging from the sky - the light switch to the world - and starts playing around with it...

Long synopsis

A young man, walking on a hill near a town, makes an extraordinary discovery at the top of a hill. Hanging down from the sky is a long rope. The man studies it suspiciously and with some caution, but as it hangs there, tantalisingly, he caves in and pulls it. Suddenly it goes from daylight to night, and he realises that he has found the world's light switch. He is in control of day and night and becomes excited by this. He pulls the cord, switching the world's light off and on, at faster and faster speeds.

Suddenly the cord gets stuck - in darkness - and the man cannot get it to make the world light again. He panics and yanks at the cord, pulling it harder and harder until it breaks. He watches as it falls, curling into a neat pile by his feet. Realising what he has done, the man lets go of the rope and quietly walks away, as the sound of chaos rises up from the streets below.....">

So, in any apartment in those towers, where the rotation is controlled by a voice command, one person wants rotation one way, one the other, until the computer controller for the apartment is going to have an electronic hernia, with all the conflicting commands.

Kind Regards....

This being a cutting edge for structural design, David Fisher is going to have his hands full from keeping this turning into an engineering abortion.