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Revolutionary Tower in Brazil
An anonymous reader writes "Have you ever thought about retiring in Brazil? If you have thought about doing so, this might be just the piece of real estate you were looking for. 'An unusual apartment building was inaugurated in Brazil, each of whose 11 storeys turns independently, giving lucky residents 360-degree views of the eco-friendly city of Curitiba.' Now, if they could only tilt it a little bit to look like Pisa's Tower..."
All you need is a counter rotating bed, and it'd be the perfect bachelor pad!
-superlime
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
will be remote-controlled
I thought the article was going to be about the kind of tower you put your motherboard in...
that would be the TACO TOWER!
Just imagine the electricity bill these guys have to pay every month. Assuming that the rotation is done by means of some electric motor. The electric motor itself is an amazing thing to begin with.
Seems like on some level, this would be extremely disorienting after a period of time. I'm sure the view is probably spectacular, but you'd probably find just one view you liked best and and be tempted to keep your "floor" stopped in that direction thus defeating the purpose of the rotation.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
"Storeys?" Geez...
It's only revolutionary if the space I purchase rotates counter to the other rings.
I was wondering how I was going to screw in that lightbulb...
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The end is near!!!
...next thing you know, they turn the RPMs up to about 60 and you're stuck to the outside wall.
But what about folks on the bottom of the stack? $300k seems a bit steep for a remote-controlled, revolving street-level apartment. ^_^ "hey look honey, it's the gas station again! ...there's the liquor store... yep.. alright! gas station again!"
At any rate, why is this building called "Ecoville"?
"Each flat has a surface of 287 square meters and costs 300.000 USD"
287 square meters gives a radius of about 9.5 meters; assuming some of that space has to go to stairs and other non-living area, you still get quite a bit of room.
How far does $300,000 go for a stationary 287 sqm condo in the same area?.
It wouldn't matter - I'd still be a nerd, round apartment or not.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I just want to live in a Darkology.
If the sun gets in the way, don't bother drawing the curtains. Just rotate the apartment so the television is kept out of direct dunlight.
Blancmange
"revolting" restaurant.
From the CN Tower and the Skylon at Niagara Falls to the Harbour Castle in Vancouver.
Can anyone name a revolving restaurant that doesn't have reeally crappy, overpriced food?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
If you have an open floor plan, you'll be able to run for miles on the walls in the high (simulated) gravity environment of your apartment without having to turn.
Blancmange
How do they handle the air, water, and electrical I wonder? That has to be a bit of engineering in itself.
Retiring? I'm moving there right away!!!
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
If the woman in the apartment across the street were to walk around naked, how fast would each level turn & focus on her?
as someone who designs mechanical, plumbing, and fire protections systems for buildings, this looks way cool and i want to read more.
REVOLVALUTIONARY Har, Har Enjoy the fish, and tip your waiter.
REMEMBER! I was drunk when I posted this...
What happens when the Hampster gets tired?
from the article:
At low speed, each floor takes an hour to revolve.
Why would the slowest speed be 1 revolution every hour?
I would think that the most natural speed would be 1 revolution in 1 day.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The thing I was wondering - if that's an apartment, are we talking 300,000 a month? Or per year? Or is that a condo price?
If it's a yearly condo price, that seems pretty cheap. If it's a yearly rental, it seems kind of high (but probably not for a place like New York or equivilent). If it's monthly, that's pretty high no matter where you are!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This building is near my work, and its in construction about ~10years!
Too many problems and too much money throw away..
I have been in Curitiba, and I must say that it's a Wonderful, Incredible city.
Amazing architecture, excelent transportation, lot's of things to do, and see.
They are heavely influenced by Centro European inmigration, I was surprised finding typical ucranian foods, etc. They also have parks representing the cultural carachteristics of each community (poland park, ucranian park, german park, etc.).
They really are the "Ecological Capital of Brazil"... they have a saying:
"If you cut a tree, and the police catch you, you better kill the policeman... you will spend less years in prison".
The only bad part is that, being a city at 850-1000 meters of altitud, it's not uncommon to have 25 Celsius degrees at midday and 6 degrees at 10 p.m. It's not really cold, but the difference between night and day is excesive.
Anyway, it's a really nice city, full of nice people!
$300k is the price to own. That is dirt cheap compared to cities in the US, but I'm sure it's pretty expensive by Brazilian standards.
Note the picture of the transportation system.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I like the sun, I don't like the sun, I like the sun, ....
Wrong. They are not poor. They are a relatively wealthy country with the worst income distribution of latin america.
Just to give you an idea, their GDP per capita is around $7600 a year. Wealthier in comparison to China ($5000) and way beyond India ($2600). Compare that to Rwanda ($1300) or Haiti ($1600). The US is around $35.000 a year and France around $27.000.
My point is that even if you lump all those countries together under the label "third world", there are huge differences between them, bigger differences than between let's say, the US and France.
On the technology sector, I think that they have the best technology of Latin America. BR has its own Linux distro (Conectiva) and I know that many commercial systems are developed using their own programming languages. They also used to have their own compressed files formats and that sort of thing.
But software is not their stronger sector. In Civil and electrical engineering they are very good. They've built the biggest electric damn in the world, Itaipu, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (Time/Life selection).
Check out the website:
http://www.itaipu.gov.br/
Brazil is the eight economy of the world (2002). It used to be the first latin american economy after Mexico, only surpassed slightly, but very recently. The Mexican economy however, is much more dependent on foreign investment. i.e. 92% of Mexican banks is in the hands of foreign capitals.
Great music, beautiful gals, great beaches, what else do you want?
Just in case you were thinking about it . . . I am not Brazilian . . . and I am not dating a Brazilian.
Now they say apartment, so is that $300,000 a month?
Or is it a $300,000 condo? Cause if it's a $300,000 condo that's pretty cheap considering some of the ones I've seen here in Philly.
Now if it's $300,000 a month, then.. well. I don't really know. Are there really that many people in our world that can afford to buy a $300,000 a month apartment in Brazil and still have money for other stuff?
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
I cant wait to see someone modding out their mechanism to speed up the rotation. Either someone who wants to rotate every minnute or even fast. Should be great to see everything being pulled outwards.
Anybody remember Fireball XL-5? With the pointlessly spinning space-control-tower-thingy? I'm sure there's a witty reference in here somewhere...
This gentlemen, is exactly why you shouldn't get completely trashed in a foreign country, at least without friends to watch your back.
I think someone's tinfoil hat is a little too tight...
I had a vision. A 6 storey rubic's cube with horizontal 360 scrolling.
I like to make them squirm - Bobby Fischer
puts a whole new twist on getting ths spins after a good party. (yeah, I know, it's bad. I can't help myself).
-r-
Okay, so it's got the restaurant(s) beat as far as total amount of building that's rotatable (if that wasn't a word, I'm declaring it as such now)... But when you're comparing to restaurants in this same vein, the real question that needs to be asked is: how's the view of the end of the universe?
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
Wow. They created a giant robotic beaver that people can sit in!!!!
I don't have a clue as to why anyone would want to live in that city. I mean come on, it looks disgusting.
In the US, for example, there's a big push to single story retirement homes. The issue here is that stairs just aren't good when you have difficulty moving around. They become hard to get up especially if you need a walker or wheelchair to get around, and falling down stairs can lead to broken bones (eg, hip fractures are often death sentences for the elderly). I don't think you'd want to retire to a place like this unless you retire young and plan to move out when you get older.
... that if a bunch of Marxists decided to hold one of their meetings in this place, they would be plotting Communist revolutions? (Ba-DUM)
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Assuming you'd actually *use* the rotation feature:
Whilst 250 square meters is quite a lot, bear in mind that you can't have anything in the way of furniture within any significant distance of the hub because at some times, where that furniture would be becomes the door to your bathroom, kitchen or stairwell - which you presumably don't want to block.
For the same reason, you also can't have radial interior walls of any kind. So you can't have a spare guest bedroom or any kind of privacy except in the hub area.
The fact is that with the outer wall being entirely composed of windows (at least that's whate the photo's seem to indicate) and the inner wall being off-limits for putting furniture against - and no other interior walls being possible - you can't have any kind of tall book cases, free-standing wardrobes, etc. No place to hang that huge flat screen TV either.
You'll also find that the door to your kitchen is sometimes in your bedroom. What happens if you wake up in the middle of the night and in your befuddled state need the bathroom! It could be anywhere in the house!
I wonder how well sound-proofed they are? The rumbling of all the bearings from the apartments above and below could become a major pain.
www.sjbaker.org
You think they'd build a revolving building like this and NOT have an elevator?
Anyone younger than 20 probably has no idea what a record is.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"Have you ever thought about retiring in Brazil?"
In the US, Spanish is still a minority langauge, the number of fluent speakers dwarfed by the number of Americans who think that it's what Brazilians speak.* The language barrier, coupled with the generally bad feelings most South Americans have against yanquis (except for the teenagers who feel compelled to practice their English on me in IM), probably doesn't place Brazil all that high on a list of places for us to retire to.
Slashdotters in Lisbon? Sure, but I doubt there are many of them.
* Was I the only one that almost hurt themselves laughing at the end of the last episode of Sealab 2021?
Wow. That place is beautiful. I didn't know that nice places like that exist in many parts of the world outside of US and especially in South America.
Very creative, Michael. It looks like you are trying out the beta version of Microsoft Pseudo-News "Professional" or something.
Honestly, do you think you can get any more formulaic? I don't mean to be a dick but that really does look super-cheesy, sorry.
*gets off elevator*
"...Now I know my apartment is around here somewhere, just give me a minute to find where it's at right now...."
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
The Seattle Space Needle uses a one-horsepower motor to rotate its restaraunt once per hour. It can be done easily.
I'm sure with modern technology, we could design a much more powerful motor that would spin the restaurant at 15,000 rpm.
No pictures, unfortunately, but a good description of the late American architect Richard Foster's rotating house can be found here: Their life revolved around home It is a stunner to be found in once-rural Connecticut, glass walled on a long-stemmed base. (Foster was a partner of Philip Johnson) For the most part, he relied on off-the-shelf, low-maintenance, industrial solutions for electricity, plumbing, etc. The house, 500,000 pounds, the motor, 1 1/4 horsepower.
Why don't they just rotate the universe around the building?
I don't know about you, but I'm afraid of that capybara in that picture.
slashdot seems so boring these days. where did everybody go?
heh heh...
hey Bevis, he said "oral"...
heh heh...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
It redefines the meaning of fixed asset.
In a similar trend to Alek's Christmas Lights webcam, anonymous internet users will be able to adjust the direction and velocity of each floor with a click of a button.
In other news, researchers intrigued my innovative new earthquake simulation technologies, begun flocking to Curitiba in force.
What if you had to leave the place really quickly, except the door wasnt lined up with the exit, forcing you to wait for it to revolve before you can leave! then again, i guess you can keep people away by turning your place till theres no entrance. (And yes, i know that there must be some logical solution i.e. the outer balcony acts as a universal exit, but im just being funny)
The owner may also change the direction and speed of the revolutions. At low speed, each floor takes an hour to revolve. ... some good hacking ;-)
"giving lucky residents 360-degree views of the eco-friendly city of Curitiba.'"
or perhaps there are no unlicky ones?
Each 300,000-dollar apartment occupies an entire floor, and there are 11 floors? While 300 grand is pretty steep for an apartment, 3.3 million doesn't seem like a lot for such a revolutionary building (pun! ah, I kill me).
Buy an ad.
-2 Flamebait? I suppose some of the mods don't understand the concept of sarcasm.
Brazil is at best a 2nd world country, and it isn't getting better.
Most of south America is a hole. I'm not racist but I have a lot of south american friends and the whole culture is lazy and greedy and that's why everything that isn't 1/2 ass crap is some kinda 3/4 ass gimmic to rip you off. There is no honest buck. Brazil is a total hole. I'll keep my $300,000 thanks
I believe that if you start anywhere in the world, no matter how ugly, you're at most three hours away from some place beautiful.
Cavite (city, not province) in the Philippines, for instance, is an arm pit. To be generous. It has entire beaches made out of garbage. This is roughly an hour and a half away: Tagaytay.
do they have land phone lines?
Help Jane, stop this crazy thing!
Now, they say the SLOWEST rotation is 1 per hour, so, the fastest rotation is what? Fast enough to make it your own workout track? Part apartment, part nordic track? Can I run in place?
Consider that if retired, you won't be running all that fast, and hey, a geek to start with, so probably overweight and somewhat slothy to start with... Maybe you could keep up with the building.
Hey, how fast was Frank Poole running in the Discovery in 2001? How funny is it that I'm now talking about a SCI-FI film that takes place in the past?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Oh so cool.
Want tilting towers, Check Madrid's Puerta de Europa... http://www.lera.com/projects/hir/pde.htm
Want tilting towers? Check Madrid's Puerta de Europa... http://www.lera.com/projects/hir/pde.htm
How exactly is this building eco-friendly? Seems like a big waste of energy to me.
Why is there a beaver-like thing standing there in one of the pictures...?
It's truly amazing to see how delusional the new world bourgeoisie can get. Curitiba is praised by green boys and girls from the rich west as being the world's first ecologically sustainable city. And now we get this architecturally mediocre tower to add to the ecology-cum-technology image.
All the while, in the bas fonds of Curitiban society, live the hundreds of thousands of people who have to survive on less than a dollar a day, and who survive in an hellish, brutal and informal slum economy.
The image of the Western bourgeois, looking out over the poor masses, from his luxury tower, hallucinating about ecology and the environment as his new ideology, is really more colonialist than the worst colonialist will ever be.
This is quite appalling.
...somebody would copy the Rotunda in Birmingham (http://www.birminghamuk.com/wikipedia/rotunda.htm ).
John
Well I'm a Brazilian living in Colorado. There are many good things going for both places - and some bad too. I'm not getting into all that but you can be assured the capivara is not to be feared! First, it's only found in the wild or in zoos. Second, it's just a very big rodent. Think of it as a 50 pound chipmunk. It's big, yes, but it's a herbivore and very very shy. I've only been able to ever see them in the zoos.
Only 300K dollars for a big appartment like that! You can't get a decent house for that in Holland (if you want to live in a city like Amsterdam).
-- Cheers!
Eco friendly?
Yes, a giant piece of machinery. I'm sure it's powered by solar and greased with vegetable oil.
Kinda like viewing the grand canyon from the Death Star.
-=sig=-
An unusual apartment building was inaugurated in Brazil, each of whose 11 storeys turns independently, giving lucky residents 360-degree views of the eco-friendly city of Curitiba.
So is this tower meant to be a slap in the face to Curitiba? With the extra resources required to build and maintain it, as well as the energy required to operate, this building is certainly not eco-friendly.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
A few other people have pointed out how $300k for one of these apartments is pretty cheap. Okay, sure, but it is Brazil after all. However, of more interest to me is that each apartment takes up one floor, and there are only eleven floors. So.. the market value of the building is $3.3 million, meaning it must have cost less than that to build! That's what I can't get my head around.. Brazil or not, an 11 storey building for $3m!??
Bill
bamph
"You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals."-Kurt Vonnegut
The fact that the only accomplishment defenders of Arabs can point to is 500 years old says plenty all by itself.
Maybe it's just me, but when I see the words "revolutionary" and "Brazil" (or any South American country), I picture something with a lot more bloodshed.
Perhaps the gears of the motors used to make the thing rotate are at least oiled by the blood of the proletariat?
By the time I RTFA my post will be so down at the bottom of the page that nobody will read my witty banter.
(But yah, I stand corrected otherwise)
Q. How many people do you need to screw in a light bulb in Brazil?
A. 404 people: 200 to build a rotating apartment, 1 slashdot reader to point out that the floor will rotate together with the ceiling, another 200 to fix the building so it rotates only the floor of each apartment, another 1 slashdot reader to notice that it will only work if the light socket is at the center of the apartment, 1 to move the socket to the center of the ceiling and finally 1 to hold the lightbulb when the floor is spinning.
The capivaras can be seen in almost every big public park in Curitiba. They are now very abundant... (live freely, just as ducks and other anymals inside Curitiba's green parks).
But, as KGBear said, they are very, very peacefull.
...just crank up the RPMs to maximum and send them flying out of the window!
You must think in Russian.
I can see it now... We're having sex in the apartment and my girlfriend starts shouting faster! faster! oh yes! faster!!!. The next thing you know our apartment is rotating at a blurry 45 RPM and the neighbors on the street are looking up and thinking "there they go, at it again!".
The worst? Our current leaders here in the U.S. would say it's the best.
That I'm not the super in that building.
"Capital punishment makes the state into a murderer. Imprisonment makes the state into a gay dungeon-master"
ROTFL... ;)
are so damn hot ... :(
oh the memories
It seems strange that the article mentions the "eco-friendly city of Curitiba" when all this building is really doing is wasting energy to get these floors turning !
totaly ridiculous
Cue jokes!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Whoever thought this was informative should turn in their geek badge and go back to high school physics class...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
So now, in the course of an hour, the whole city will know that I'm looking at internet pr0n...
If each aparment is one entire floor, why not just walk to the other side of the apartment and look out the window? If there were two or more apartments on each floor I could see the point of having it rotate to give everyone an opportunity to view the scenery.
Yo momma!
wtf?
Please try to keep posts on topic
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
Its a capybara - the largest type of rodent in the world. I suppose they put it on there for the same reasons that a lot of Florida websites have cartoon alligators.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
But software is not their stronger sector. In Civil and electrical engineering they are very good. They've built the biggest electric damn in the world, Itaipu, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (Time/Life selection).
No. They paid for the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world. Most of the engineers involved were foreigners working for foreign contractors.
rotation
It's a cool place. I was there last year for three weeks and enjoyed it immensely. Some pictures at http://www.phfactor.net/pics/Brazil/Curitiba/index .html
I grew up in Wilton, CT where a rather eccentric architect decided to build his dream house. It's a single floor circular house, built on a pedestal about 15' off the ground. It was built on a German battleship gun turret, and has adjustable speed and direction rotation. Max speed is about 1 rev/hour. My father was lucky enough to know him, and arranged for a tour of it the place.
I asked all those questions above. Electrical is via brushes, phone as well. Sewer and water each are handled by trough-style rings, where the top rotating ring fits inside the bottom, fixed ring, and can slide freely.
Bearings have to be greased every 10 years or so, but surprisingly the sewer and water seals have held up.
Unfortunately, the architect has passed on a few years ago. The house is for sale... last time I checked it was $2.5M and no takers. (Most people with that kind of money don't have a desire for that kind of place)
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
That's less than my house! And it is bigger than my house. Why do I have my house again? The last I checked it doesn't rotate AT ALL. Stupid fixed house.
I wonder if the higher units cost more.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And the basis for your assertion is that that's what the other contenders for power who weren't elected claim in their rhetoric?
Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
About 15 years ago, I had a dream to move to Curitiba (I'm originaly from Santos). I never was able to do that until 1999 when I was invited to work at Conetiva, the makers of Conectiva Linux. Despite a do agree Curitiba is a beautiful city, it went down the slope due to overpopulation and bad administration which increased a *a lot* the levels of poverty and violence.
Right now I live in Joinville, quite close to Curitiba but a much smaller (about 500K inhabitants) and cheapper, nicer, quiter and safer place to live.
Scientia est Potentia
I've read all the posts and I am thoroughly convinced that the IQ level in here has dropped considerably.
... like the paper bag they have over their heads.
... all solved problems from long ago. The comments about stairs really cracked me up. Not. Go see the movie "Kate & Leopold" ... only this time pay attention to something other than Kate's bottom. Elevators were invented LONG ago and even Brazil has them now. Brazil has an arguable claim to have invented heavier than air flying, fer cryin' out loud.
... it wasn't built for you.
People seem to be worried that they won't be able to find the bathroom or the exit in time. Makes me wonder how they find them in rectangular structures
All utilities run through the center column. The kitchen, restroom(s), exit / entrance and quite possibly the bedroom(s) are all in the fixed center column. In all likliehood, only the living areas held in common rotate. No engineering marvels here
You guys who are working so hard to find fault with this building needn't bother
"More intelligent Mods, combatting this silly policy, sometimes mod funny posts Informative etc. so humorous posters are rewarded with Karma."
If the guy was posting for karma, he would have posted something informative.
Sounds like the last ten years in Campinas. Everybody is moving to the suburbs because it is safer.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I wonder if you can null out the bedspins after comming home from a hard nights drinking.
Here in Arizona, you pay a premium for houses with north facing living rooms and yards, to keep the summer sun out.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
That's not the best way to develop software.
. . . and I am not dating a Brazilian.
Me neither. Bummer
"Just in case you were thinking about it . . . I am not Brazilian . . . and I am not dating a Brazilian. "
We weren't thinking about it. This is Slashdot, we know what to expect.
Yes, that woman is trying to resuscitate that poor baby that must have fallen into the water...
Now, if they could only tilt it a little bit to look like Pisa's Tower..."
Nah. It would just be an 11 story Tilt-A-Whirl.
What?
Sounds like you got all your information about brazil from the wild world of p0rn.
...RoboCock.
I wonder how many RPM's can they get out of that baby.
Does the furniture slide?
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Do you actually think objectively about reality? Kerry and Edwards aren't exactly Joe Sixpack frantically squirrelling money away in their 401Ks. These men have more wealth than most people can imagine. What makes you think they really give a shit about you? Because they said so?
I don't see how this is revolutionary. .
Its like calling the triple (as opposed to single ) blade razor revolutionary. Its not, unless it has wi-fi, now tacking wi-fi onto a razor will make it revolutionary, yah
Damn I hate everything
What's causing the violence?
Is this a response to the parent comment? Who said anything about Kerry and Edwards? Seems that the feudalists are getting a little touchy...
Get an orkut profile and that'll change real fast :)
Eco-friendly my ass, you're using energy (=burning fossil fuel=pollution) to rotate your damn apartment, instead of walking your lazy ass from one window to another. This must be Brazil's understanding of eco-friendliness.
Must-not-watch TV!