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..."

Comments

Dead or Alive

[Code-Ex]

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

Think about the electric bill

[amjith]

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.

Re:Think about the electric bill

[PabloJones]

My guess is that they have the electric motors on the outer edge of the place, not on the inside. It could come with two motors per floor at opposing points of the circle. Since the place probably doesn't rotate extremely fast, even at the highest setting, then the motors wouldn't need to drain a ton of power.

This seems more or less to be a gimmick. I bet the people living there will only use their novelty spinning condos for a month or so, and then get sick of it and show it to people when they come to visit and whatnot. If you have an entire floor of a circular building, then you can walk around and get all the views you'd ever like. I think the nicest thing is the fact you can keep it in one spot for a month, and then when you get sick of the view out your bedroom/kitchen/living room window, you can rotate it 90 degrees and get a whole new view for another month.

But is that feature really worth the extra price? And how likely is this thing to break down?

Re:Think about the electric bill

[ruprechtjones]

The Seattle Space Needle uses a one-horsepower motor to rotate its restaraunt once per hour. It can be done easily.

Re:Think about the electric bill

[DieNadel]

The appartments rotate really, really slowly. I happen to live just a 5 minutes car drive of it and I can say that, besides looking a bit funky, it's been there for ages (it took several years for being finished), and it has become sort of a local joke.

And yes, US$300k is A HUGE LOT OF MONEY here in Brazil. It's almost 900k reais, when our minimum wage is around R$300.

revolutionary indeed...

[the_skywise]

It's only revolutionary if the space I purchase rotates counter to the other rings.

Thank god! At last!

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I was wondering how I was going to screw in that lightbulb...

Don't p*ss of the maintenance people...

[Create an Account]

...next thing you know, they turn the RPMs up to about 60 and you're stuck to the outside wall.

Re:Don't p*ss of the maintenance people...

[pjt33]

What a wasted opportunity for a "first against the wall when the revolution comes" joke.

Great for the folks on the top few floors...

[tattoi.nobori]

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!"

Plumbing?

[cryogenix]

How do they handle the air, water, and electrical I wonder? That has to be a bit of engineering in itself.

Re:Plumbing?

[Sparr0]

why? you just make a torus-shaped water pipe near the axis, and cut it in half horizontally. the two halves can rotate independently without ever breaking a seal. then theres pipes going up/out from the top half and down/out from the bottom half. air is easier, less seals. electrical is trivial (*cough*brushes*cough*)

Incredible city

[miope]

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!

Re:I am shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

But that's using 1950's technology

[i41Overlord]

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.

Re:But that's using 1950's technology

[AndrewStephens]

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.

Thats how they clean it. Every night the last person out fulls the restaraunt with warm-soapy water and then pushes the spin-cycle button. 45 minutes later the whole place is clean, fresh, and ready for the next day.