With land resources getting scarce due to a rapid rise in population, architects believe that skyscrapers, tall enough to house thousands of people, are the way forward. Adding an eco-touch, architects and designers compliment their designs with environmentally-friendly features such as integrated renewable energy generators and efficient lighting systems. Future skyscrapers are also designed to mesmerize the world with unique looks. Here is a list of 20 such spiraling skyscrapers that have been designed to adopt sustainability with grace:
Strata Tower, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The Strata Tower is 160 meters high. It is a forty-story, luxury residential building designed by architects Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture of Asymptote. The elegant building’s design gives special consideration to environmental sustainability and will be open sometime in 2011.
Mode-Gakuen Spiral Towers, Nagoya City, Japan
Mode-Gakuen Spiral Towers are a marvel of educational architecture. It is located on the Main Street of Nagoya city. Double-glassed air flow window system in breathtaking spiral building provides natural air ventilation making it eco-friendly. The structure is designed to survive the most severe earthquakes.
Mangal City, London, UK
Mangal City is not a building but an urban ecosystem. It consists of modular pod capsules that mimic the structure of a mangrove. This is a prime example of sustainable architecture that provides housing and cultural activities, and it blends with the environment around. It is currently at a conceptual design stage.
Solar Powered Skyscraper
Kenneth Loh and Michelle Lim have created the prototype of a solar powered tower. The entire façade generates solar power and harvests water. Along with residential units are gardens, farm fields, educational, cultural and recreational areas.
Spiral Tower, Berlin, Germany
The Spiral Tower concept’s main motive is to create a suburban living environment within a city. Living areas are generously sprinkled with open and green areas. The structure generates its own power with solar panels and wind turbines. Rain water harvesting and purification systems make it an almost self-sustaining ecosystem.
Edgar Street Towers, New York City, US
Edgar Street Towers, currently at a design stage, were inspired to provide living spaces along with commercial, recreational and cultural centers. Fiber-optic array transmits light downwards during the day, and, by night, it is lit by solar-charged batteries. Bio-filtration terrariums throughout the structure provide clean air.
Oasis Tower, Dubai
Rahul Surin specifically designed the Oasis Tower to create a structure for vertical farming. The structure harvests solar and wind renewable energy. The architect believes that one spiral-tower can generate enough food for 40,000 people.
Fog Tower, Atacama Desert, Chile
The Fog Tower, designed by Alberto Fernandez and Susana Ortega, is 400 meters tall. The genius of the structure is in how it harnesses water in the driest place on earth from mist clouds for agriculture. It can provide 2-20 liters per square meter of vertical surface.
Helix Hotel, Abu Dhabi
The Helix Hotel designed by Leeser Architechture partially floats in water. This luxury hotel has been designed to sustain the environment while having exquisite features like an indoor waterfall.
Za’abeel Park Observation Tower, Dubai
The Za’abeel Park Observation Tower was designed by XTEN Architecture to be a zero energy utilizing tower. The exterior is covered with solar film. Geothermal cooling and ventilation and powering the building with solar-charged cells makes it a green structure to the core.
Canton Tower, Guangdong, China
The Canton Tower was designed by architect Mark Hemel. It took six years to build and was opened in 2010. The form, volume and structure is generated by two ellipses, rotated relative to another.
Chicago Spire, Chicago, US
The building was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava inspired by the the grace of a snail shell. It was planned to be 150 stories. The eco skyscraper is still in its construction phase.
Space Scraper, Cairo, Egypt
The Space Scraper, a triple tower skyscraper, was designed by Mohamed Abdel-Aziz. Each twisting tower was for residential, commercial and hotel space. It answers every need of an average urban space. A health center at the top and the rest of the building is powered by solar and wind power, and boasts of water harvesting.
Boscolo, Nice, France
Big Architects have designed the Boscolo to be a complex with four towers, public spaces and all the amenities of urban living. The project is currently under construction. It is designed to merge with the current environment of Nice.
City Skyscraper
Czech architect January Pavlína Dolezalova Smekal aimed to create super spiral lungs of the city. This skyscraper is covered with algae and comprises a group of spiny concrete units inspired by sea sponges. The weird looking tower works like a chimney where air is filtered and oxygenated by algae and a special system of water sprays. This is a conceptual model though.
Detox Towers
These models were designed for a competition based on the concept of using live matter to reduce pollution and reduce energy consumption. The skyscrapers aim to push “energy self-generation and material degradability to further approximate autotrophic built environments.”
Rotating Tower, Dubai
David Fisher of Dynamic Architecture has designed the Rotating Tower that has recently begun construction. It is a 59-story structure that would generate more power than it utilizes. It is a more than self-sufficient building meeting its energy needs from solar and wind power.
The Solar Spire, Chicago, USA
The Chicago Spire project has been revived as The Solar Spiral. The building will be able to generate more than a megawatt of power with solar panels. The structure will combine community living with all the amenities of urban living within the building.
Wind Tower, Britain
The British architects David Arnold and Alexa Ratzlaff have designed a eco-friendly spiral structure that harnesses wind energy. The central core of the building has the wind turbine designed to use wind, no matter in which direction it may flow. It would be a 45-meter structure housing 2000 households.
Spiral Staircase Skyscraper, Barcelona, Spain
This imaginative spiraling skyscraper was designed by Nabito Arquitectura of Barcelona. The focus is on each individual house having its own personal green space. It looks very much like a spiral staircase with gardens jutting out of each house.
