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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
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.
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
...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!"
except that you could have that one view for every room in the house ...
---- death to all fanatics
I just want to live in a Darkology.
How do they handle the air, water, and electrical I wonder? That has to be a bit of engineering in itself.
If the woman in the apartment across the street were to walk around naked, how fast would each level turn & focus on her?
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!
Well, for once I did RTFA, and having lived previously in San Antonio (Texas) as well as Dallas (Texas), I've had many opportunities to dine at a couple of tower-top revolving restaurants (rotation ~1/hr). While not "exactly dizzying", it can be somewhat disconcerting to see the scenery changing minutely but perceptively. When writing the comment, I was thinking more along the terms of subtle changes over months/years of "exposure" as I'm not aware of any prior prolonged human experience like this being studied/reported... I was just curious. If nothing else, I'm sure lying in bed at night, you'd feel the machinery.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
$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
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.
I had a vision. A 6 storey rubic's cube with horizontal 360 scrolling.
I like to make them squirm - Bobby Fischer
... 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)
You think they'd build a revolving building like this and NOT have an elevator?
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.
Who says everything has to be in the center? With proper wiring and piping, the bathroom and kitchen could be in relatively the same place all the time.
There could be a central room that everything opens into, and where the border between the apartment and hub is. There could also be radial walls, as long as they didn't go all the way to the center (this gruesome accident comes to mind).
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.
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.
Ecoville is the name of the residential area. Buildings there are supposed to be wider apart from each other and have gardens in between.
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
Bill
bamph
"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.