Futuristic architecture dynamic architecture

INDEX
• CONCEPT OF DYNAMICS
• DYNAMIC ARCHITECTURE
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI - INTRODUCTION
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI - SCHEMATIC DRAWINGS
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI – ROTATION
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI – PREFABRICATION
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI – CONSTRUCTION
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI – SUSTAINABILITY
• ROTATING TOWER DUBAI – ADVANTAGES
• CONCLUSION

DYNAMIC ARCHITECTURE
• Dynamics is a branch of mechanics that is concerned with the effect of forces on
the movement of objects.
• Nowadays architecture is seen as something static, since buildings remain on the
same place and their configuration doesn’t change at all.
• The concept of movement in a building is known now as Dynamic Architecture;
living in a dynamic Universe it makes sense that the future in building design will
follow this example.
• Buildings that follow a Dynamic Architecture modify their shape constantly. This
creates a visual attraction immediately caught by the human eye, which focuses
its attention in movement while being surrounded in a static environment.
• Change and adaptability to a changing environment will be premises to follow in
this type of design.
• Looking towards the future makes sense that buildings following a dynamic
approach will shape the cities.

The Idea of Dynamic Architecture was born with the desire to have buildings
that adjust themselves to life, that are part of nature. Buildings in which each
floor rotates separately, change their shape continuously and never look the
same. Dynamic Architecture buildings keep modifying their shape.
 Traditional architecture – Gravity
 Dynamic architecture – Motion dynamics
 A mechanical approach to civil construction – Trans disciplinary
 Buildings will no more remain the ‘fossilized imagination’ of the architect;
 They will change, constantly bringing new views and experiences to us
with time
 Introducing the fourth dimension in architecture : TIME

• The Dynamic Tower is a proposed structure by architect David Fischer,
whose vision is to construct a work of architecture that adjusts itself
to life and thus, as a part of nature.
• Inspired by the Suite Vollard in Brazil, the world’s first rotating
building, David Fischer planned to build an 80-floor tower, with each
floor prefabricated on ground level and designed to rotate 6 metres
per minute (Randl, 2008).
• These individual floor rotations give the appearance of a wave that
runs vertically along the building.
• The core of the tower would be built at the construction site, serving
both people and cars in elevators.

The Rotating Tower:
 Apartment sizes range
from 124 sq.m to villa of
size 1200 sq.m
 It will be the first
building in the World to
be entirely constructed
from factory made
prefabricated parts.
 These parts are being
manufactured in a
factory in Altamura,
Italy.

The Rotating Tower:
 80 floors, 420 meters
tall.
 First 20 floors will be
Offices.
 Floors 21 to 35 will be a
Luxury hotel,
 Floors 36 to 70 will be
Apartments.
 While the top 10 floors
will be luxury Villas.

• This slim core would have to be strong enough to support all subunits and
floors .
• Each floor is composed of 12 subunits and will be assembled at the
construction site via a lift system.
• As a result of the separation of each floor, each floor will be allowed to
move individual with the wind, as the building is powered by horizontal
wind turbine, one between each floor.
• Each wind turbine will produce 0.3 megawatts of electricity, which is said
to be enough energy produced for 50 families according to the Dynamic
Architecture website.
• Since solar panels will also be included in the construction of the building,
this means that the two energy efficient sources combined could provide
Dubai with $7 million USD worth of surplus energy per year (Dynamic
Architecture, n,d.)

• The Dynamic Tower follows the rule: “to maximise flexibility of
architectural form, assemble complex structure from simple repeating
units.” The genius of the Dynamic Tower is revealed through its overall time
construction reduction and energy efficiency.
• Each individual floor will be constructed in 12 subunits to expedite the
general construction process, reducing construction time by about one half
and save a huge sum of money that would have been spent on labour.
• Every subunit of each floor, completed with all electrical necessities,
plumbing, and air-conditioning, will be delivered up to complete the
structure via a lift system, with each individual subunit would be assembled
upon the core that is situated on a strong foundation.
• The advantage of preassembling and constructing the tower via a lift
system lies in time efficiency and worker safety.

The Rotating Tower:
 It will require just 600 people in the assembly facility and 80 technicians
on the site instead of min. 2000 workers for a similar building.
 “The Rotating Tower Of Dubai will be the First Industrial Skyscraper ever
constructed. 90% of the building will be prefabricated and assembled on a
central core, the only part built with traditional reinforced concrete
poured on the site.”
 The Dynamic Tower in Dubai is the first Building in Motion to be
constructed in the world, and it will herald a new era of architecture and
become a symbol of Dubai, the city of the future.
 Apartments will range in size from 124 square meters (1,330 square feet),
to Villas of 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet) complete with a
parking space inside the apartment.

• The architecture is quite literally flexible and it’s possible that an
individual would never see the same building twice, as there can be
so many variations of the structure (Dynamic Architecture, n.d.).
• The flexibility of the building will allow the building to move with the
wind, ensuring a higher resistance to earthquakes.
• Although the tower will be expensive to build, summing up around
330 million USD to construct, the rotating feature of the tower may
be worth the investment—The tower would be generating its own
electricity from the enormous horizontal wind turbines stacked
between each floor, making the building incredibly energy efficient

Challenges
• The Rotating Tower project is a completely new concept, therefore
some subjects need to be investigated
• For it to be a feasible project, the main concerns are:
 Water supply
 Human comfort in the tower
 Driving system of the floors
 Structural system

A BUILDING IN MOTION
• 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.
• Aside from the changing view, the movement will create a different
approach to our space.
• Furthermore, these buildings will also create a different way of
looking at real estate.
• in all Latin languages, the world for “real estate” has a meaning of “an
un-movable property” (Ex. immobiliare, immobilier, immobilien).
With the completion of Dr. Fisher’s Dynamic Tower, the word in the
dictionary may have to be changed.

A BUILDING IN MOTION
• 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.

The Rotating Tower: Rotation
• An owl's head, can twist so far round that it faces backward... but
when the bird wants to look forward again, it must turn its head back
the way it came. And this is not just a biological problem.
• Even human engineers have difficulty with it, which is one reason why
revolving buildings—with their need for water, sewerage, gas and
electrical connections—are so rare.
• But that could now be changing. The simplest approach to such a
building is what might be called the owl solution—in other words,
incomplete rotation.
• This allows fixed but flexible connections to be used.

• The rotation of the floors is done with steel bearings and combination
of air-cushion, allowing the floors to rotate smoothly and with no
vibrations.
• There is limited power of about 4 KW required to rotate a floor. The
drive system is situated in the base of each floor so it can not be seen
and in the same time it allows easy maintenance when required.
• The structure is based on a reinforced concrete core of about 22mt
diameter that carries all the vertical loads. The floors will be all made
of steel structure, becoming a monolithic platform, with a cantilever
up to about 15 meters.
• The floors will be connected to the core in a way that will allow a
continuous rotation to either direction, with no vibrations or noise.
• each floor will be rotating individually and complete one full rotation
in 90 minutes. The rotation of the floors depends on the rotation of
the central core

The Rotating Tower: Technical Aspects
Tower crane by the
Liebherr, Germany
• Technically, the concept itself is not
complicated, it would imply designing a
magnified structure of existing
mechanisms such as tower cranes, and
building bigger bearings.
• The technical knowledge for building
this type of structure is readily available
since it is a technology that has been
proven to work in construction
machinery for many years:
• most of the cranes follow this principle
since they need to allow rotation of the
structure, electricity and plumbing for
hydraulic cylinders have to pass through
it so the operator can make the
machinery work.

Roller bearing by the company
Liebherr, Germany
The Rotating Tower: Roller bearing
• A bearing is a device to permit
constrained relative motion
between two parts, typically
rotation or linear movement
• For architectural and structural
reasons, the gear must be 16.2
m diameter,
• since it must rest on the
elevator and services core of
the building. The mass of the
rotating floor will be supported
on this bearing and loads will
be transmitted to the ground
through the concrete core.

3D view with cut of a roller bearing with external teeth

Cross section of a roller bearing with external teeth

The Rotating Tower: Roller bearing
Slewing gearbox
• A slewing gearbox will be the power source of
movement for the roller bearings of the
structure.

Driving system
• The most important component in the concept of the Rotating Tower
is of course the movement of the separate floors. Therefore a new
system had to be developed to rotate the floors.
• A rail is connected to the floors (the upper green part) and this rail
rests on wheels which are connected to the core.
• To move the floors horizontal rotating wheels are connected to the
core (black wheels in the figure).The wheels role against the floors
and move the entire floor.
• The full weight of the floors (approximately 600 to1000 tons per
floor) rests on the wheels.
• Each wheel is designed to carry 50 ton (500kN) and will therefore
introduce large local forces to the core.

• The rotation can be programmed to follow the path of the sun, solar
panels will be installed in the roof of the rotational part of the building.
So, although the rotation would be even slower, this will translate into
efficiency in the design of the building by making it more sustainable.
• since the bearings would restrain the vertical and horizontal movements,
though they are not able to carry bending moments, the core of the
structure would act as a concentrated mass.
• Having this rotational part in the core of the building decreases the
structural efficiency, the massive weight makes the building act as an
inverted pendulum and reduces the effective stiffness of the system.

• The rotation of the structure will be very slow, allowing for a quasi-static
approach in the analysis.
• A whole different approach would be used if the rotation was faster, but
for human comfort a fast rotation is neither feasible or desirable (it
could produce dizziness in the occupants).
• Besides, visually speaking, a structure that rotates very fast would be
scary for people just by seeing it from outside .

Construction of central core:
• The central core would take just six months to be constructed, using
slip forms that allow the erection of a floor every two days.
• This structural solution of massive single concrete core increases the
building's seismic resistance compared to other skyscraper.
• In This central core all elevator and staircase are built by traditional
concrete reinforcement method.
• Two months after the start of work, the first residential unit can be
completed with all their plumbing, electric, and air-conditioning
system.

PREFABRICATION
• Each module of each unit is fully equipped with all necessary
plumbing and electric systems plus all finishes from floor to ceiling,
customized according to the owners’ specifications, including
bathrooms, kitchens, lighting and even furniture.
• The pre-fabricated module units are then simply hooked together
mechanically and hoisted up the concrete core, completed from the
top down.
• Due to their pre-fabrication, these buildings of the future will also be
easy to maintain and repair, making them more durable than any
traditional structure.
• Dr. Fisher states, “Almost every product used today is the result of an
industrial process and can be transported around the world, from cars
and boats to computers and clothing.

PREFABRICATION
• Factories are utilized due to their ease of access to raw materials,
integrated production technologies, and efficient labor processes,
which result in high quality at a relatively lower cost.”
• Dr. Fisher continues, “It is unbelievable that real estate and
construction, which is the leading sector of the world economy, is also
the most primitive.
• For example, most workers throughout the world still regularly use
trowels that were first used by the Egyptians and then by the
Romans.
• Buildings should not be different than any other product, and from
now on they will be manufactured in a production facility.”

PREFABRICATION
• This architecture is revolutionary even in the way it's built. It is in fact
the first building produced in a factory, apart from the concrete core.
• It's produced of complete luxury units in a factory, including all
plumbing, electrical, air conditioning and installed on the concrete
core right on location.
• This ready made implementation offers high quality finishing, high
quality control and the use of a very few workers on site, with a real
cost, life risks and time savings.

PREFABRICATION
• Besides, this architecture made of single separated floors offer higher
seismic resistance than any other normal building.
• Dynamic Architecture is designed for better living even before it's
finished.
• The readymade technology allows a revolutionary implementation
which is the quickest way to build a tower: building time is reduced
from 30 to 18 months.
• The revolutionary readymade technology, plus the fact that it moves
to the wind, allows the building to be 1.3 times more resistant to
earthquakes.

The Rotating
Tower:
Construction

Structure
• Above is a schematic of the WinWind 3.0MWwind turbine showing its major
components.
• A tapered roller bearing is used to connect the rotor hub to the gearbox casing.
• The bearing transfers the rotor loads directly to the main casing, in process
keeping the drive train free from excessive rotor loads.
• The planetary gear train increases the rotating speed and transfers the torque to
the low-speed permanent magnet generator.
• The frequency converter transfers the full generator power.
• The machine produces efficient and reliable power even at low to moderate wind
speeds.
• The WinWind 3.0 MW Wind turbine operates on Multibrid technology .

Structure
• Multibrid is an upcoming and advanced concept in the performance of wind
turbines which uses a planetary gear system along with a low-speed permanent
magnet generator.
• The conceptual model consists of a single-stage planetary gear along with a low
speed generator and a frequency convertor, with the main advantages being the
elimination of high speed components thus keeping a higher strength to weight
ratio.
• The mechanical forces are managed with the main bearing which is designed to
undertake all the rotor loads.
• The turbine supports an all enclosed structure to shield the components from
dust particles.
• This technology results in high efficiency starting from low wind speeds.

Structure
• Since the overall method is automatic, the power production and the generator
control system are optimized and the maintenance levels required are
significantly lower compared to the traditional system.
• The wind turbine therefore is robust and reliable and has a longer working life
time than the traditional turbines.
• Having stated the functionality of the proposed WinWind 3.0MW turbine, the
following section highlights the design model for the investigation.

Structure
• The structure of the Rotating Tower consists of a few main parts: a central
core, a steel structure and a foundation.
• Core -
• The maximum dimension of the core is given in the architectural design
• Steel structure -
• The steel structure is already designed in an earlier stage. When necessary
the design of the structural steel can be adapted to the stability structure,
since the steel structure is now designed as a free structure hanging from
the core.
• Foundation -
• No design for the foundation is made yet. A preliminary design will be
made for the foundation in such a way that the rotational stiffness of the
foundation is sufficient to resist deformation caused by wind loads.

Structural design of the floors
• Box structure
• A box structure carries the total floor weight.
• This structural type is used for the top 10 storeys (the villas), because
it is not preferable to have structural elements within the area of the
villas.
• All structural components are situated at the edges and bottom of the
floors.
• The downside of this type of structure is the storey height (5,15
meter and 700 mm space between floors).
• The weight of the structural steel (figure 5-2) is 5200 kN.

Structural
design of
the floors

Structural design of the floors
• Truss structure
• The second structure which is designed is the truss structure.
• Trusses throughout the entire floor carry the loads.
• This type of structure is used on floors 0-70, since these floors do not
require an open floor plan.
• Because of a more efficient use of structure the storey height can be
reduced (4.9 meter and 700 mm space between the floors).
• The weight of the structural steel is 4500 kN.

The Rotating
Tower:
Structural
system
structural system static position structural system when rotating

The Rotating Tower:
Connection of perimeter column

A connection which can(dis)connect to both directions.
 . During the rotation of the storeys, the columns will not pass each other,
so the connection can be (and is) a tight fit.
 The red parts in the figure are added to make sure that the columns will
be “guided” into the right direction and the columns will connect
correctly.
 This part of the connection also contains a “slope” to push the upper
column up.
 This is necessary to make sure the columns will also carry a part of the self
weight of the storey structures (and create a compression force in the
columns instead of tensile forces due to only wind load).
 The “guiding” structure will be covered with a slick material (for instance
Teflon), to create as less friction as possible between the structure and the
column.

The Rotating Tower: Services- PLUMBING
 The rotary union fittings are fairly common for plumbing in industrial
applications.
 These can even have two or more concentric, isolated, fluid flow
passages, but manufacturing them gets increasingly difficult.
 The real trick is that every one of these rotary connections would
need to be exactly coaxial with the axis of rotation of the building
floor, as there is no way to allow for the horizontal pipes' rotating
sweep to pass across the vertical elevator shafts without interfering.
 There will be two smart connections, but those two connections
might be divided for waste and fresh water plumbing.

The Rotating Tower: Services- PLUMBING
 Rather than using rubber hoses to connect the stationary and
moving parts of the building, 3sixty's ingenious plumbing system
employs horizontal ring-shaped pipes made of steel.
 it employs two ring-shaped half-pipes that rotate with respect to one
another (the lower one remaining fixed while the upper one revolves
along with the building).
 The joints between the half-pipes have rubber seals to stop the
contents from leaking, and each half-pipe has a vertical pipe
connected to it, to introduce or dispose off the fluid concerned.

The Rotating Tower: Services- Electrical
 Electricity, meanwhile, is delivered via a conductive brush that sweeps
around a metal ring in the stationary base.
 something like a subway's "third rail" electrical supply with a paddle
contact on a bus bar would work fairly well.
 On a smaller scale, slip ring connections are again fairly common in
industry.
 Still, one has to limit the number of separate connections, and probably
make the floor as self-sufficient as possible in terms of utility services.
• The obvious approach is to use rigid horizontal plumbing and electrical
through the rotating plates and vertical lines through the core, with a
flexible, extendable connection point at the interface.
• In all likelihood it will have some very congested areas with concrete slab
reinforcing, slab rotation systems and mechanical, electrical and plumbing
lines all vying for limited space.

The Rotating Tower: Sustainability
• The Dynamic Tower, the world’s first building in motion, takes the
concept of Green buildings to the next level, generating electricity for
itself with a possible surplus for other nearby buildings, making it the
first skyscraper designed to be entirely powered by wind and sun.
• With wind turbines fitted horizontally between each rotating floor, an
80-story building will have up to 79 wind turbine systems, making it a
true Green power plant.
• While traditional vertical wind turbines have environmental and social
effects, including the need for roads to build and maintain them plus
their noise and obstruction of views, the Dynamic Tower’s wind
turbines are practically invisible and extremely quiet due to their
special shape and the carbon fiber material of which they are
composed.

• Another environmentally green element of the Dynamic Tower is the
photovoltaic cells that will be placed on the roof of each rotating floor
to produce solar energy, approximately 20% of each roof will be
exposed to the sun
• so a building that has 80 roofs will equal the roofing space of 10
similar size buildings.
• In addition, natural and recyclable materials including stone, marble,
glass and wood will be used for the interior finishing.
• Energy will also be saved during construction, which involves pre-
fabricating individual units in a factory.
• this Fisher Method not only reduces construction time, but it also
results in a cleaner construction site with limited noise, dust, fumes
and waste, the shorter building time also results in a less energy
consumption than traditional construction methods.

The Rotating Tower: Advantages

The Rotating Tower: Disadvantages
Economy
• The construction cost of building is very high because of use of
special equipment in construction and modern construction
techniques i.e. prefabrication.
• The overall cost of construction of these building is near about US
$355 million (2200cr). But by other way, as it generate huge amount
of electricity, it may be beneficial for long term.
Maintenance.
• The whole building is in motion excepting central core, hence
building units may get affected early which requires frequent
Maintenance.

Conclusions
 The design of dynamic buildings faces many challenges due to the
changing geometries of the structure.
 In projects with great height (over 400 meter), the structural system
always contains more than just a central core. In all the reference projects
the core was provided with extra strength and stability by an extra
structure. This structure was either an outrigger or a perimeter tube
structure.
 It was demonstrated that the rotation of the structure doesn’t change the
stiffness of the whole building, maintaining a similar dynamic behaviour
and simplifying the design considerations from a seismic approach.
 Even though it decreases the structural efficiency, it is an interesting piece
of Architecture that undoubtedly catches the human attention.

References
• URL: http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/
• URL: http://www.liebherr.com/cp/en/49444.asp
• URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_bearing
• Fisher, David H., Rotatable Building Structure, United States Patent
Application Publication No. US 2006 / 0230691 A1, October 19, 2006
• Fisher; D; Dynamic architecture: the Rotating Tower Dubai; RTTI; 2008
• H. David Fisher, Rotating Tower Dubai, Rotating Tower Technology
International Limited (UK) 2008
• Van der Schans, J.; Rotating Tower: Vooronderzoek, menselijke
perceptie van de rotatie en het voorontwerp van deophanging en de
aandrijving van de verdiepingen; 2008

Patent publication
by David Fisher.

Futuristic architecture dynamic architecture

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