Buildings Of The Future

With the brief from WWF well under way I thought It might be a good idea to have a look a what our skyline will look like in 100 years. As a society we are going to have to figure out ways of living more efficiently -  here is a look at some of the designs and ideas that might shape the future and the way we function as a society.

The Venus Project

The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. One of the things that they take a close look at are our cities. The Venus Project advocates the building of what it calls 'Total City Systems' which are "designed to operate with the minimum expenditure of energy using the cleanest technology available, which will be in harmony with nature to obtain the highest possible standard of living for everyone."

There are some other very interesting ideas that go along with these cities, including something called Cybernated Government and a University of Global Resource Management. You can read more about that here. There are also designs for subterranean cities aswell as Cities in the Sea.

The Dragonfly & The Lillypad

The Dragonfly is an urban farm concept for New York City’s Roosevelt Island designed by Vincent Vallebaut. The design is modeled after the wings of a dragonfly and designed to provide fresh, local food within an urban environment. Fruit, vegetables, grains, meat and dairy would be produced on the Dragonfly’s 132 floors and the entire structure would be powered by a combination of solar and wind power.

So far it’s just theoretical, but The Lilypad floating city concept is one of the most well developed ideas for a functioning sea community yet to be created. The design resembles a water lily and would not only be able to produce its own energy through solar, wind, tidal and biomass technology but would also process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin. Each of these floating cities could hold as many as 50,000 people.

The Wind-Powered Rotating Tower

Italian architect David Fischer designed the Dynamic Tower Skyscraper so that each of its 80 floors can rotate 360 degrees. Fischer wanted to design a space where you could enjoy the sunrise and sunset from the same room. The rotation takes up to 3 hours and is powered by solar panels and 79 wind turbines, with one turbine located between each floor. Almost the entire structure will be pre-fabricated offsite. Construction is due to be completed by the end of 2010.