Get Ready for the Rotating Apartment of the Future

–

–

Industrial designer Yi-Chen Shin Kuo has developed an apartment building which rotates so that the apartments have changing 360 degree views. He won the Futuristic Design Category in the A’ Design Award and Competition for his 2014 thesis on the project titled “Turn To The Future.”

The Taiwanese architect states that this project gives urban people the opportunity to change their lives, because it redefines the future of living spaces. “The main feature of building encompassed a system that changes the way that humans interact with their environment. By moving the living the user’s spaces; it’s also change interior relationship with the ground, sky, light, gravity and shadow. According to my research, urbanization has become a big trend in the world. Because of that, buildings will become higher and higher, and more and more people who live in the lower floors of buildings will get their view blocked. Based on the results from both the Asian and the American market research, there is a different in sales or rental prices between the lower floor units and higher floor units in the same building. In the future, all the top floors of buildings will be owned by people with very high incomes and the middle to lower income people will only have a limited view from their living spaces. The high income people find it hard to buy the top floor of living spaces in buildings because there are a limited amount of these units in the most major cities.”

The new design allows each unit in the building to move at predetermined times, decided upon by residents. Because of that, the residents will have different angles and views of their city. The center of the building has four elevators and two staircases that allow residents exit and entrance. Doors leading to moving system will close automatically when the units are moving to change their position. When an emergency occurs, the system will automatically shut down and residents can exit from the stairs.
–

–

The Entire moving system includes the spiral track, roller coaster system, utility re-connection system, hydraulic braking system, support braking system, infrared sensor system, regenerative braking systems, dynamic generator, cranes systems, hydraulic skidding systems, and a central computer control program. Every units slide down on the spiral tracks by gravity that uses a roller coaster system to hold the units on to the track and stops it by the hydraulic braking and support braking systems. When the unit stops, the regenerative braking systems will save the electric power for each unit, also when units slide down, the dynamic generator system also can save the energy (electric power) for the system. When the last unit gets to the bottom of the building, it will be moved into the center of the building by the hydraulic skidding systems and moved up to the top by the crane system. The central computer control program will be set up for every unit to move to the correct position by the infrared sensor system. Before the units move, the utility re-connection system will slide back and close in the center. After each unit moves to the next location, the system will reconnect to the unit. Each unit also has an individual utility system that can support the units when they move. The materials used in construction for this building are: aluminum, steel, smart glass and solar panels. Materials considered for the units of the building should be light, strong and soft, which includes carbon fiber, bendable concrete and artificial bone. The units will be built by 3D printing in the factory and send to the building.

Building’s height will be roughly 308 feet (Floor 10’X24 + Roof top floors 20’+ Spacing 2’X24 = 216) that includes 27 floors of 71 units, roof top spaces. Each units will be 110 tons and the size will be 1658 square feet.