The madness of a revolving skyscraper
Surely a revolving building will make a significant number of people inside it constantly nauseous? Plans have been announced for a $700m moving skyscraper, the world’s first, in Dubai. The 80-storey tower will open its doors for business in 2010. You can be certain people like myself who suffer from balance disorders and disabilities will not, unless extremely foolish, ever set foot in such a building. Chances are, even looking at it would trigger the symptoms of my Mal de Debarquement Syndrome to go into overdrive.
But you don’t need to see, or even consciously sense, movement for it to have a negative impact upon the body. Consider, for example, the effects of zero gravity on astronauts, or the fact that some people get travel sickness in aeroplanes even when they don’t look out the window and are seated.
If people want different views, they should go for a walk. Or if they’re rich enough to buy into this revolving skyscraper, buy a few houses across the world. The amount of money being spent on this thing would be better off invested in people, or green energy initiatives—although the building will be energy self-sufficient as the 79 giant power-generating wind turbines located between each floor will produce enough electricity to power the entire building and feed surplus power back into the grid.
The apartments, which will take between one and three hours to make a complete rotation, will cost from $3.7m to $36m. I am reminded of the staircase in Hogwarts, in the Harry Potter books and films; that, too, would have me throwing up just to look at it for more than a few seconds.
I doubt very much that the Italian architect announcing the project in New York has given any thought whatsoever to the physical and psychological impact this building could potentially have on anyone inside it. I can certainly imagine a scenario where, once completed, the building ends up making so many occupants throw up that it becomes a hideously expensive, undeniably clever, white elephant in which nobody wants to live or work, and those who buy into the vision will find themselves seriously out of pocket.
If that happens, one good thing to come out of it might be a greater awareness of the day-to-day difficulties encountered by those of us with perpetual balance disabilities—but somehow I doubt it. Balance problems are unseen, little understood if at all, and nearly always trivialised in comparison to other sensory dysfunctions. If things were different, if balance was even considered, this skyscraper would never have got off the drawing board.
tags: architecture, balance, balance disorders, Dubai, nausea, skyscrapers
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