Revolving Architecture

10 revolving architecture designs for a lovely spin

By Radhicka S Saxena

Creativity and aesthetics are hallmarks of modern day architecture. Another spectacle achieved in this century is the rotating constructions that move around giving a complete view of the sites outside. Many buildings, especially towering skyscrapers are being designed to spin around. Such a panoramic view can also be enjoyed from individual houses that swivel around. There is even a lighthouse and wind tower in the list that can accomplish this feat. A hotel in Europe is also being constructed with the ability to spin around giving guests a chance of get different views from the room. Let’s take a look at a few such dynamic architectural wonders.

Rotating Wind Tower

1. Michael Jantzen’s Revolving R-House

Revolving R-House

Constructed from Accoya, a new variety of sustainable and high performance wood, this vacation home can be assembled on site. On the exterior are rotating walls that shelter from wind and the sun while the central room is encased by four screens which can have multiple arrangements. It uses eco friendly technology like wind turbines, rainwater harvesting and photovoltaic cells, etc.
2. Environmentally Friendly Rotating House

Rotating House

Designed to rotate around the central axis, this creation of Rolf Disch is powered by solar energy. The front of this house has a triple-glazed glass while the back is insulated to keep the interiors cool during warm climate conditions.
3. Rotating Tower Planned For Dubai

Rotating Tower

Penthouses that turn around is an amusing mechanism that is under construction at the Jumeirah Village in Dubai. The 15 story tower will have the top 5 floors spinning around at a speed preset by the residents. At the summit of the tower is a villa that will rotate and also accommodate parking space for three vehicles and a car lift.
4. Spinning Lighthouses

Spinning Lighthouses

The brainchild of Don Dunick in New Zealand, it took about 18 years to develop this idea and come up with a working plan. Now, he has even taken up contracts for similar such projects in North America. A crane mounted on a pedestal rotates the construction all the way round to 360 degrees.

5. Revolving House

Revolving House

A beautiful building with an aesthetic construction is designed to circle around. All the floors of this building will spin around. The building has a magnificent white hue and a posh modern construction.
6. Rotating Wind Power Tower

Rotating Wind Tower

Reaching for the sky, this towering grandeur structure in Dubai built by the eminent Italian-Israeli architect David Fisher will swivel gloriously. It has self sufficient energy producing mechanism powered by sun and wind.
7. The Rotating Dubai Tower

Rotating towers

Yet another project by the inventive and farsighted David Fisher, this is the first building that will stay in motion. The building is about 1,380 feet tall and will accommodate around 80 floors. There will be apartments as well as villas inside the building with parking space inside them.
8. Rotating skyscraper in Moscow

Architectural designs

Another such rotating skyscraper is being built by David Fisher in Moscow. This structure will be a gigantic 1312 feet in height and accommodate around 70 floors. An extremely elite structure, there will be very few similar structures the world over. It will cost around 400 million dollars to construct the building.
9. Dubai Time Residence Rotating Tower

Time Residence Rotating Tower

Another building that will rotate a full 360 degrees is under construction in Dubai. Powered by solar energy, the building also has huge sized motors that will enable it to turn around a whole 360 degrees over a course of seven days.
10. Solta Island Resort First Rotating Hotel

Solta Island Resort

With so many residential building incorporating a revolving design, hotels couldn’t be left far behind. This structure in Europe will give all its rooms a chance to have a view of the breathtaking Adriatic Sea. It will complete around 1.3 revolutions in a day ensuring that every room gets alternate view of the sea, countryside and fish farm each day. The building will not be very massive; it has three stories and is about 60 meters in diameter.

http://www.designbuzz.com/entry/10-revolving-architecture-designs-lovely-spin/
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Rotating Architecture: 16 Sweet Spinning Structures

By Steve in Architecture & Design, Urban Images, Urbanism

Architects have always aimed towards building bigger, wider and higher (and, recently, more sustainable as well). Now technology has made a fourth design dimension possible: movement. These 15 amazing structures shift their shapes, put a new spin on style!

(image via: Everingham Rotating House)

Don’t like the view out the window? Change it! That’s what the designers of the Everingham Rotating House had in mind when designing this quaintly styled spinning cottage. Thanks to perfect balancing around a precisely located center of gravity, a motor no bigger than one used to power an average washing machine can turn the house a full 360 degrees in about 2 hours.

(image via: RotatingHome.com)

Al and Janet Johnstone of Mountain Helix, CA, think their rotating home is so cool, they’ve patented their plans. The heart of what the Johnstones call – wait for it – the RotatingHome is a SWIVEL mechanism that allows rotation in either direction without disturbing utility connections. A RotatingHome can be set to spin once every 30 minutes to once a day.

(image via: Inhabitat)

The Orchid House takes kinetic housing to the next level. While its outer walls, supporting members and central core are fixed, the interior non-loadbearing walls can be shifted in a number of directions so that each room is just large enough for the owner’s needs. The home includes a sun deck that fans out over the water, supported by pontoons. The Orchid House may look somewhat rustic but it utilizes the latest in green technology – geothermal heating. Very much a work in progress, the beautiful orchid House is set for completion in 2011 and recently sold to an anonymous buyer for a whopping $14.2 million!

(image via: Trendhunter)

Revolving is another way of injecting a little kinetics into a structure, as demonstrated by artist John Körmeling’s house in Tilburg, The Netherlands. Check out the house in action here:
John Körmeling’s house in Tilburg, The Netherlands
Körmeling’s house is affixed to the edge of a large turntable powered by solar panels on the house’s roof. It makes one full circuit every 24 hours, which is (hopefully) slow enough for passing drivers not to be overly distracted. Körmeling’s house is strictly art – it’s not designed to be lived in.

(image via: msnbc)

Scaling things up, here is the Heliotrope House in Freiburg, Germany. Designed by visionary “solar architect” Rolf Disch, the Heliotrope House rotates very slowly, just enough to track the sun and ensure the sail-shaped solar energy collector on the roof receives the optimum amount of sunlight.

(image via: Wired New York)

Dense urban settings lend themselves to highrise buildings and even though the engineering is more complex, designers have still found ways to add motion to their creations. Take the Suite Vollard apartments in Curitiba, Brazil. Completed in 2001, the modernist edifice features 11 rotating stories that turn 360 degrees independently of one another. The apartments at the Suite Vollard are sold by the floor, which eliminates any squabbles with the neighbors over who gets the best view. Pricing is surprisingly reasonable as well, just $300,000 for each unit.

(image via: High Rise Properties)

Even more spectacular designs are leaping of the drawing board; nowhere more so than in Dubai. The oil-rich city has become the poster child for megaprojects and futuristic schemes like palm tree shaped artificial islands and, most notably, truly monumental buildings. The Rotating Residences shown above may not bear the most exciting name but they do promise a living experience that will move you – literally.

(image via: Jaunted)

Any mention of Dubai would have to touch on the amazing Rotating Tower in Motion (above), a 68-story wonder by architect David Fisher. Each of the 59 moving floors of the 313 meter (1,027 feet) high skyscraper move at a comfortable 6 meters (about 18 feet) per minute around a central utility spine while integral wind turbines capture the breeze to provide clean, green power. The building will feature a designated parking area on every floor, with the owners’ vehicles being raised and lowered as required by special elevators.

(image via: Dynamic Architecture)

David Fisher has designed a similar spinning skyscraper for the world’s most expensive city to live in, Moscow. Using many of the same design features as Dubai’s Rotating Tower in Motion, the Moscow Rotating Skyscraper is slightly larger – 70 stories towering 400 meters (1,312 feet) high. The building is expected to be completed in the year 2010 and will be constructed much like a familiar infant’s toy, with each pre-constructed module being placed onto the central utility spine.

(image via: Luxique)

Now not all spinning structures are ritzy digs and not all of them actually move – sometimes just the illusion of movement is enough to suit the designer’s purpose. That’s the case with the Jumbo Hostel, brainchild of Swedish entrepreneur Oscar Dios. Having bought an old 747 jumbo jet from a bankrupt airline, Dios plans to park it near Stockholm’s Arlanda airport and rent out rooms to those who are board with plain hotels. The “plane hotel” will have 25 small rooms and a suite to stretch in place of the old flight deck.

(image via: BLDG Blog)

This artistic endeavor in Liverpool, UK, employs motion in an eye-catching way. Richard Wilson cut a 24-foot diameter circle into the facade of an otherwise nondescript downtown building and attached the slice to a rotating pivot mechanism. The result is an odd juxtaposition of 2D and 3D – proof once and for all that “England swings like a pendulum do.”

(image via: DeputyDog)

Also from Liverpool is this pastoral arrangement of seemingly ordinary trees… yet things are not quite what they seem. Called Arbores Laetae, Latin for “joyful trees”, the project features 17 trees of which 3 rotate into different positions as the day goes by. The trees are a popular attraction at the British city’s biennial arts festival.

(image via: Ebaum’s World)

Luigi Colani has designed what very well may be the home of the future, and rotation is what makes it work. The home is compact and modular from the outside but it’s the spin within that gives the house a unique appeal. Central to the plan is a cylindrical section that rotates via a remote control to present a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen. The house, says Colani, “was designed for young professionals who need minimal space while they focus on (their) career.”

(image via: Blog Wired)

What better place to have a rotating home than in an actual rotating city? Believe it or not, there’s one on the drawing boards. And yes, it’s in Dubai. Contractor High Rise Real Estate submitted an expansive (and no doubt expensive) plan that would see an entire city spring up from the desert landscape. While the new urban center itself wouldn’t rotate, most every structure in it will: stylish villas, ultramodern apartments, swanky restaurants, mega-star hotels and more will be able to swivel, turn and re-position themselves to take best advantage of the sun or shade.  Hospitals weren’t mentioned but if they were, you’d find them staffed by spin doctors!

(image via: Blog Wired)

Next: 12 Unbelievable Buildings in Motion

http://weburbanist.com/2008/09/20/rotating-architecture-16-sweet-spinning-structures/

"Kinetower + exclusive interview with Kinetura"

Link: http://blog.kineticarchitecture.net/2011/02/kinetura_kinetower/
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...Kinetura brings flexibility to life....

The Kinetower is Kinetura's concept for a building whose façade elements responds to the sunlight or for the user inside. Kinetura is design team of Barbara van Biervliet and Xaveer Claerhout established 2006. Meanwhile they both run the architectur

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Foster House for sale!

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Wer sich in den Zeiten der Immobilienkrise Amerikas nun ein Schnäppchen ergattern möchte, kann nun den Foster House für 1,1 Millionen anstatt 2,3 Millionen Dollar kaufen.

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1967 errichtete Richard T. Foster, Schüler von Philip Johnson, sein eigenes Haus in Wilton, Connecticut. Es handelt sich hierbei um eine runde Stahlbetonstruktur mit Stahl-Glas-Fenstern, die sich jederzeit komplett um 360° drehen kann. Im Centrum befinden sich eine Wendeltreppe und eine dünnes Stahlrohr, indem sich ein Teil der Haustechnik befindet. Das Haus wird mittels einem kleinen Elektromotor, der eigentlich für Baustellenkräne konzipiert wurde, angetrieben. Die Außenverkleidung besteht aus Holzschindeln und Cor-Ten Stahl.

2005 wurde das Foster House saniert und steht nun zum Verkauf.
Hier ist ein Video vom Makler.

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photo by http://www.zillow.com

photo by http://www.zillow.com

photo by http://www.zillow.com

photo by http://www.zillow.com

„I didn’t plan the house so that we could go riding. It was planned so that we could take advantage of the varied and beautiful views. We didn’t try to capture the sun. There didn’t seem to be any point to it”.

Nachdem ich mir die Sattelitenbilder und das Maklervideo angesehen hatte, war ich sehr enttäuscht vom Standort. Ich sehe nämlich die primäre Zielsetzung, wobei die Rotation einem die Möglichkeit geben soll, in jedem Raum einen angenehmen Ausblick zu genießen, als nicht erfüllt an. Denn obwohl das Gebäude eine sehr gute architektonische Gestaltung aufweist, verliert es ihre Kraft bezüglich ihres Standorts. Trotz allem sollte man sich die Mühe machen dieses Gebäude näher anzuschauen und die Details studieren, denn leider bei vielen drehenden Gebäuden ist die architektonische Ausführung vernachlässigt worden.

photo by "Revolving Architecture" Chad Randl ISBN 978-1-56898-681-4

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