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Dan StewartWe can knock Vinoly's London eco-chimney, but UK developers and architects are being equally gaudy and ungracious in Dubai |
The rotating tower block is dreadful – but Brits are to blame
26 June, 2008
Not even a week after Rafael Vinoly unveiled his 300m eco-chimney to sit beside a restored power station in west London, along comes an even more ridiculous scheme: a rotating tower block in - you've guessed it - Dubai.
Architect David Fisher cheerfully admits he has never designed a skyscraper before, but his computer says this building can be constructed in an Italian factory, oven-ready for the end of 2010. So that's all right then. The developers reportedly want to build one in London. Might I suggest a site in Battersea?
Now, most people in the industry know that the culture of greed and excess in the United Arab Emirates has led to some pretty bizarre schemes, including a building shaped like an iPod, an archipelago of islands designed to resemble a map of the world, and a kangaroo-shaped bouncing skyscraper designed for the Australian Embassy which actually moves around the desert from oasis to oasis, soaking up natural resources wherever it lands. Okay, so I made that last one up, but admit it - you believed me for a minute.
The great shame of it is that British architects and engineers, for generations the humble designers of buildings of dignity and grace, are the ones perpetrating these eyesores on the oil-rich desert empires of the Middle East. Although the architect himself is reportedly of Italian stock, the company is British-based. (Its name? The “Rotating Tower Dubai Development Co”. No prizes for guessing what it is they do, then.)
Benoy, one of our largest architects, is designing a Ferrari-shaped theme park in Abu Dhabi, and if you haven't seen UK architect Sybarite's butterfly-shaped hotel design, then follow the link below and suggest a nickname for it. The hundredth entry will win a free night there, once it has been built.
With the credit crunch a-biting, UK architects are increasingly looking to Asia and the Middle East to shore up dwindling workloads in the mother country, with the result that British expertise is being used to throw up ever more outlandish schemes with no consideration for context or place-making.
But when a Uruguayan-born architect like Vinoly comes to our capital city and proposes doing the same thing, we fall about laughing. I am no great fan of Vinoly's scheme, but perhaps we should put this in perspective. George Ferguson, a former president of the RIBA, has written a very funny comment piece for Building's sister magazine BD on the scheme, but I don't see anyone coming out of the woodwork and criticising British involvement in the similarly misconceived schemes that are being drawn up in the Middle East and China.
This is cultural imperialism, of a sort - it is all very well designing these gaudy blemishes if they garnish their landscape, but when someone designs a futuristic or otherwise unusual scheme in London, we call in the heritage brigade and pull the plug.
Granted, it would be a worse kind of cultural imperialism if we advised the authorities in Dubai and elsewhere to improve their planning regimes, but while our industry continues to play a role in building giant, incredible towers in the Middle East, we ought to be careful about slagging them off when they appear in our own backyards.
See David Fisher's tower rotate
Readers' comments
I think that they built one of these before. The NLA Tower in Croydon. Unfortunately the budget run out half way up and the rotating mechanism jammed.
Saying the Dynamic Tower in Dubai will be entirely powered by wind is a bit like saying the new Porsche 4x4 will be pedal powered.
As is often the case, the marketing imagery here is misleading: the tower is always rendered with graceful patterns created by a coordinated rotation of the individual floors, but then the units are described as giving the tenant the choice of rotation and view. It would be interesting to see some renderings where the floors are rotated more randomly, favoring the best views and never quite aligning with each other.
I think if British people do not start looking into the future, we will fall behind the rest of the world without us noticing it. Look at all these magnificant towers and architecture being built overseas, a lot of them are done by British architects. This is because British architects have more freedom to design and create in these countries. Also people in these countries are forward looking and more willing to accept new ideas. Their governement want to build the best for their people. As long as the English Heritage has the statutory power to stop these modern buildings getting built in the UK, British buildings will be always conservative and boring. One day Britain will become a museum of Victorian architecture.
'creative engineer' does the UK a disservice. We have planning policies and regulations to protect our people. How many average developing world inhabitants will be housed in these schemes? And as for the rotating towers I ask one question: how does the plumbing work? Does your loo have a rubber pipe on the back end of it or are all kitchens/bathrooms inside the non-rotating core?
Come on now!
If the real tower looks anything like the (I suspect hugely speeded up) movie then it will be bewitchingly beautiful.
It may fail, but so what? It's their money and vision, so it is hardly our place to carp from the side.
In this country you can barely replace a garden shed without some dull clod objecting to the idea.
DJ, I like that you have pointed out the problem with the plumbing, however eveyone so far seems to have overshoot a different, possibly more concerning problem, obviously their is some serious time lapse going on in the video, but seriously, how blooming annoying will it be having to try and get in the entrance door, yet alone find it, whilst its pulling all its fancy moves! Dont get me wrong its a brilliant concept, but the thought of spinning around, watching tv and looking up to see a different view to what was there originally just makes me feel a little queezy.
I think that vibrant ideas should be promoted more. It's better to have something different and interesting than boring "Prince Charles" buildings. And another thing, the building's services will be controlled by building regulations. And more, British architects were working Dubai long before the current economic crisis, and in terms of local context, DUBAI WAS A BLOODY DESERT!!!! what more needs to be said of context??