Green Options

Dubai has plans to build the world’s first rotating building with independently moving floors. What’s more, plans call for it to be completely energy independent. The self-powered Dynamic Tower will have revolving floors, with each one powered by wind turbines located in between the floor. This will lead to the building looking radically different every time you look at it (sort of like a constantly evolving Dali architecture).

The strategy of "open building" can be traced back to European and Japanese roots. While it has been widely adopted in those parts of the world, it is only relatively recently beginning to see any use in North America. However, an increased interest in pre-fabricated construction is helping to expand awareness of this approach to building.

The principle is to maintain a separation between the different aspects of the building in

[...]

Photo Credit: Living Homes (via Inhabitat) Bob Ellenberg wrote a good, thought-provoking (and discussion-starting) article at Inhabitat titled 'Prefab Construction: Green or Greenwashing?' and drew comments from Preston Koerner (of Jetson Green) and Lloyd Alter (an architecture writer at Treehugger with whom I had some inter-blog discussion over the past couple of weeks regarding foundations, but more importantly also an entrepreneur in prefab construction with direct [...]