World's first 'rotating skyscrapers' in Dubai

Add as a preferred source on Google

Italian architect David Fisher has unveiled his plans to build world"s first revolutionary rotating skyscrapers in Dubai and Moscow.

The first “rotating tower" – a design that would allow every floor of a towering skyscraper of apartments to rotate at the will of its occupants or building operator, offering scenes of sunrise and sunset all from one location – is to be finished by 2010 in booming Dubai, the second shortly after in Moscow.

He hopes to build a third tower in New York some time "very soon."

The visionary builder said that the idea of building the tower in NY came to him when he was enjoying the view from a friend's Manhattan apartment and imagined a building where “everybody can see the East River and the Hudson River."

The Dubai tower will be 80 stories tall, housing office space, a hotel, and apartments. Each floor will rotate independently at a different speed, giving the building a constantly changing shape. In the apartments on the highest floors, owners will set the direction of rotation through a system that responds to voice commands in three languages.

The perk doesn't come cheap - apartments will sell at 3,000 dollars per square foot - with the largest ones going for a whopping 38 million dollars. The tower will also make all its own energy and electricity for neighboring buildings with wind turbines placed between floors.

In another first, it will be built mostly in a factory in Italy and then assembled on site. Fisher said a rotating tower would be a "beautiful" addition to the Manhattan skyline, adding that he had received some requests from New York developers to work on one.

He hasn't scoped out an ideal location in the city yet. "This building's going to be a landmark. It doesn't matter really where you put it," the New York Daily News quoted him, as saying.