The Gyre: A Floating Upside Down Eco Skyscraper

Posted by Big Gav in green buildings

Green "building" of the week from Inhabitat is this particularly ambitious seaborne design - The Gyre: A Floating Upside Down Eco Skyscraper.

The Gyre is essentially an inverted underwater skyscraper, diving down to a depth of 400 m (1,312 ft) and would be about the same height as the Empire State Building. Four arms extend from the center spire (1.25 km in diameter) and act to buoy the structure as well as create a safe inner harbor and port large enough to accommodate the world’s most titanic ships. The center tower starts off at 30,000 sq meters of space and each floor down gets progressively smaller, down to 600 sq meters. The total floor area of the entire structure is 212,000 sq.meters, or roughly 40 football fields.

Powered completely by renewable energy, the Gyre is an off-grid, zero emissions development. Vertical wind turbines would be mounted on the top of the radial arms, collecting wind off the ocean. Semi-transparent solar windows would be used as glazing on the entire structure and then solar panels would be used as shading on the pedestrian walkways up on top. Underwater turbines would generate power from water currents when anchored, and then they would act as thrusters for propulsion for when the Gyre was in motion. Additionally, rainwater would be harvested in the central vortex and collected into storage tanks at the bottom of the spire.

1 comments

SP says 12:01 AM

Well it might work if parked in some back water pond... but those arms are not going to work in anything that can remotely be called "ocean".

DS9 meets Turbo CAD at the School of Graphic Design.

Is this going to replace the Bahamas when they go under as the only industry shown is tourism. And I guess it will have to be a strip mall is there are no reefs to scuba to at 400 m.

The artiste has no nautical nous.