The Capital Gate tower in Abu Dhabi has been certified as the world’s ‘furthest leaning manmade tower’ by the Guinness World Records.
The certification comes after months of strict evaluation by a Guinness committee that started in January upon completion of the exterior of the 35-story tower. The 160-meter high tower leans at an angle of 18 degrees, more than 4 times the angle of the Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company is the owner and developer of the tower. The tower is designed by international architectural firm RMJM and is slated to be completed by 2010. The tower is being built using many innovative techniques that contribute to its unique shape and strength.
Capital Gate integrates several sustainability features. The tower sports a double-glazed façade that facilitates greater energy efficiency. This is due to the air being pre-cooled between the inner and outer facades before being expelled. Also, low-emissivity glass, being used for the first time in the UAE, keeps the building’s interior cool while maintaining transparency and eliminating glare. The building also features a unique stainless steel ‘splash’ descending from the nineteenth floor. This ‘splash acts as a design element as well as a shading device that eliminates 30% of the sun’s heat before it can reach the building. The ‘splash’ also twists around the building towards the south providing the tower maximum protection from sunlight.
These are a pretty novel idea; rather than using up ground-space to build parks, build huge towers and build them on top of those. They were designed with places like Tokyo in mind, where they don’t have the land to rip down buildings for a park or a greenbelt. The towers would feature grass, fountains, benches… everything you could want in a park, except for that non-terror inducing “being at ground level” thing that usual parks have.
Every metropolis, regardless of its location in the world, at some point during its existence runs into the same problems: lack of free space, human congestion and air pollution. Ironically, large metropolitan cities, such as Tokyo or New York, are often populated by many with increased health awareness; people jogging or biking around tiny city parks and busy streets is a much more common sight than in smaller towns.
Unfortunately, research has shown that increased activity within urban development, such as jogging on busy streets along side traffic, increases our chance of breathing harmful particles associated with car fumes and other toxins in the air. The recommendation is simple: continue to exercise, but away from the streets. However, this is easier said than done in places like Tokyo. What is the answer if we can not move streets and radically change the existing urban landscape? We can create a new city within the existing one; a new public green layer for the existing metropolis.
Between engineering and biology, Hydrogenase is one of the first projects of bio-mimicry which draws its inspiration from the beauty and the shapes of the nature, but also and especially from the qualities of its materials and its self-manufacturing processes. The new green revolution is really in progress and enables us to design the air mobility of the foil after shock, 100% self-sufficient in energy and zero carbon emission! This inhabitated vertical aircraft inaugures a clean and ethic mobility to meet the needs of the population en distress touched by the natural and sanitary catastrophes, and all that without any runway! Its architecture is subversive and fundamentally critic towards the ways of living of our contemporary society that we have to reinvent totally! Let’s take off thanks to biofuels and let’s propel to the eco-responsible transport of the future!
Proposed by design firm Philip Modest Schambelan + Anton Fromm, Hiding in Triangles is a new hotel for bike enthusiasts that clings to the side of a mountain. Located approximately 500 meters above the northern tip of Lake Garda, Italy, the hotel seeks to attract extreme sports enthusiasts visiting the Alps.
While there are no stairs to get inside, the hotel is accessible on every floor by a series of angled ramps that flow off of the natural curve of the mountainside and into different parts of the hotel.
Heerim Architects has attempted to reinvent the skyscraper beyond the traditional with two lunar inspired projects in the central Asian republic of Azerbaijan.
The Korean firm has dreamed up Full Moon Bay and Caspian Plus that includes Crescent Place on neighbouring peninsulas in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku that look on to the Caspian Sea – the two projects on opposite extremes of the same bay acting as gateway markers.
Hotel Full Moon is essentially a disc with rounded edges and a hole in one of the top corners that appears radically different to the view depending on the angle it is seen from. The frontage thanks to the bulging centre makes it appear more like a glass death star whilst the side profile is more than a little gherkinesque.
Single Hauz – a specific manifest, a suggestion of a house/shelter for contemporary Western Man. The Wedlock, a fundamental family unit, now ceased to be the only way of life. As a free-standing one-person housing unit it fills a certain gap: lack of such propositions for so-called “singles”. Inspired by a billboard it is designed as an object that can easily fit into almost any place on Earth. Particularly recommended to locations with extra-ordinary landscape conditions: forest, sea, lake, mountains, meadows; yet a sideway of a city thoroughfare.
What’s not to love about this undulating bridge designed by Toronto-based architecture firm Ja Studio? At 492 feet long (150 meters), the Lent-Tabor Bridgeis is nestled within Maribor’s historic city district and provides walkers, runners, and cyclists with their own exclusive crossing of the Drava river. The winding bridge has a reflective metallic red underside and a crisp white walkway.
Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia and the footbridge is part of the city’s attempt to revive its riverfront area. The competition to build the footbridge arises as Maribor prepares to become the European Capital of Culture in 2012.
The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a planned steel tower to be located in East London as part of the London 2012 Olympic Park. Billed as “Britain’s answer to the Eiffel Tower”, the tower will be the largest public work of art in the United Kingdom. At around 400 feet (120 m) it will be some 21m taller than the Statue of Liberty. The Eiffel Tower, by comparison, is 1,063 feet (324 m) tall.
The tower has been designed by sculptor Anish Kapoor and is named after the steel company ArcelorMittal in recognition of owner Lakshmi Mittal’s donation of appoximately 1,400 tonnes of steel for constuction.[1] The £19.1m design incorporates the five Olympic rings and will offer visitors panoramic views of London. Plans for the tower were announced by London Mayor Boris Johnson on 31 March 2010.
Dr. David Fisher’s Dynamic Tower is the first building in motion that will change its shape and add a fourth dimension to architecture: Time. The shape will be determined by each floor’s direction of rotation, speed, acceleration and the timing; with timing meaning how each floor rotates compared to the other. The rotation speed will be between 60 minutes and 24 hours for one revolution.
Residents, if they own the entire floor, are able to control the speed and direction of the rotation by voice command. One can have breakfast watching the sunrise, lunch viewing the open sea, and dinner overlooking the lights of the city – all from the same place inside their unit. The other floors will be commanded by the architect, by the mayor or whoever will have the password to the computer program that will give the building a different shape at every glance.
According to Dr Fisher, these buildings will be designed by all of us, at any given moment, and will be shaped according to our needs, our present concepts of design and quite importantly, our moods – as an expression of freedom, beginning for the first time in history to control the shape of our homes and cities.
Evoking images of flying saucers, interplanetary space pods and science fiction futurism, the Futuro house offered homeowners a chance to live in the future without ever leaving their front yards. Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed the Futuro house in 1968 but only 96 of the fiberglass-reinforced polyester plastic pods were produced over a 5-year period – killed by the 1973 Oil Crisis that tripled the price of plastics.
