Just something I got a kick out of that my friend sent me a link to. His uncle's company is designing this monstrosity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7472722.stm

I can imagine this sort of thing being quite fashionable for corps and rich people in SR. "Oh how cute, you have one of those buildings that just sits there and does nothing interesting"

That was on one of the episodes of Thunderbirds my husband has on DVD. They were moving the Empire State Building and it fell. This could be all sorts of runs to protect sabotage the equipment, the buildings. Maybe to raid the buidlings before it is moved or rig bids for the contract.

That is pretty cool. And self powering.

It's actually not the process of lifting and moving a skyscraper, though I've heard they can do that and that's scary enough to me. This is more of a building where all of the floors independently rotate with the wind (and theoretically power the building from the 79 wind powered turbines that are spun by said wind)

Oh that. I'm at work and didn't want to risk the link.

I saw that yesterday on CNBC. They said the unit is modular amnd people could drive into the units. Personally I do not want to even walk near it. I get visions of units flying out, but I did think it looked really cool as a SR type building.

Heh yeah. I envisioned the "Oh my god! Floor 53 is spinning out of control! We're all gonna die!" scenario too.

have stairs alternate between being in the middle and on the rim of the spinning and have the floors rotate in differing speeds and directions . . you NEVER know where you're gonna be on the next floor O.o
that's got to be the most frustrating work-place ever *G*

What's next? buildings that USED to move.

For one, each individual floor is controlled by the owner. So you an forget the elegant choreography pictured in the vids and instead imagine a mostly static, completley disordered arrangement. Once the novelty wears off owners will likely settle on an orientation for months at a time. Also, all those moving parts. It WILL break down. How easy will it be to fix?

Screw rotating skyscrapers. Someone should make a traction city.

Given the price tag of each unit, I do not think these will sell to someone who would not take advantage of the design. Also upkeep and maintenance will not be a big issue given the resources available to such owners.

I would suspect that the average owner will end up programing their unit to track the sun and/or moon. Imagine an artist loft where the light is always at the best angle, or a a night-owl who can always see the moon from his study.

upkeep and maintainence is ALWAYS in issue. id doesn't matter how much resources you have to throw at it, it still takes time. downtime is downtime. And the ultra rich are MORE likely to blow money on a frivilous thing they never use. They have the same impulse control isues as the rest of us, with more resources to waste.

furthermore, I'm not sure that continuous rotation would be comfortable. Will the rotational differences between the center and the edge be disorienting? can you enter and leave while it is in motion?

We already have restaurants that revolve continuously, and there are ways to come and go during said rotation (usually the central core does not rotate).

I did not mean to suggest that maintenance would not cost resources (time and nuyen) just that the cost would not be a big deal to those that can afford to buy the units in the first place. This building is in the same market as SS The World.

Both would be excellent targets for a Shadowrun.

I could definitely see the cost in maintaining them being immense yeah. As it is, I still can't conceive of what would allow them to have a low enough friction to move with the wind with the weight of an entire floor/apartment on it.

That aside, where'd you get the part about each floor controlled by the owner? I got the impression the things just spun with wind, which is how it's all self-sufficient energy-wise.

The fastest of these apartments rotates at 1/60 RPMs. That isn't very fast at all.

According to the article, the wind turbines are between the floors, and the floor rotation is controlled by the individual owners.

From a Shadowrun high-security point of view, each level could be made energy independent, meaning you could not cut the power until after you were already there. With all the cool high-end construction going on I could see Dubai being an interesting city to set a game in. Has the location been covered in an SR book?

Unique projects in the city (Wikilinked)

• Burj Al Arab (world's tallest hotel)
• Burj Dubai (world's tallest building)
• Dynamic Tower (topic of this thread)
• Palm Jumeirah (island)
• The World (archipelago)

And of course The World (private condo/cruise-ship) could be in port

Dubai is, I believe, covered in Shadows of Asia.

Edit: I'm less sure after flicking through briefly. I swear I remember mention in something I've read.

Corp Enclaves has a section on Dubai.

depending on radius, that can become fast on the outer rim . . not very likely, but it can . . and imagine what kinda fun a hacker or technomancer could have with those O.o

Not to mention this is built in a desert, and moving parts and sand/dust storms don't mesh too well ....


Not much, if they actually use all the encryption and security measures available in Unwired (like wifi-hostile paint, access points strong-encrypted, ect). However, since SR4 people apparently REALLY WANT to be hacked,a ccording to sample node stats, I don't see this building standing for even a week before some technomancer with some 100 Karma under his belt blows it to pieces.

I've always assumed that Shadowrun security was a heavy follower of the example set by things like The Club (the thing you put on your steering wheel to "stop" car thieves). In fact almost any car thief can remove the club in under a minute, but that still means that your car is harder to steal than the ones around it. In other words, you do not need to run faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy.

So for most companies, they only have enough security to keep out the random attacks, under the theory that a dedicated attack will be able to get through almost any security, and it is just not worth the resources to try and stop those.

All of that reasoning goes out the window if you make yourself a high-visibility target, so things like the Seattle Needle, and these other unique buildings around the world, would have maxed out security, precisely because they have made themselves targets via their uniqueness.

Ask any webmaster: downtime is never negligable. The system will break, and no amount of money will make it not break. Every minute it isn't funtional is a minute it isn't doing what the owner paid millions for it to do. There are many ways to increase reliability but the silest and truest rule is the mre moving parts you have, the more it will break. This isn't just a building with moving parts, this is a building in which each floor moves indepenently. I predict that past the first few months of operation, at least one floor will be on the fritz at any given time.

And I reiterate, there is no coordination between floors. Within days the exterior will become a jumbled mass of chaotic facings, losing any coherence as a design.

As to the coordination between floors from an outsiders aesthetic perspective, you are correct, but no one disputed that. I think that (especially in a world where magic is real) a condo that can track the sun, moon, or a favorite constellation would appeal to some.

As for maintaining the building, the costs of proper maintenance are "negligible" to anyone rich enough. (The monthly cost could be more than my annual salary, and at the same time less than the rounding error on a billionaire's reported income.) I would imagine that each floor would have dedicated programs (like modern elevators) that can schedule maintenance before a breakdown actually occurs. If the design is redundant enough, than routine preventative maintenance could even be done without shutting down the floor's rotation. If you have dedicated full time maintenance staff, and pay them appropriately (heavy bonuses, based on sustained operation with no down time), I could see breakdowns as almost unheard of.

Routine preventative maintainence is also downtime, though it has the advantage of being downtime that you can schedule.

It is possible to build a system with enough redundancy that repairs and maintenance could be conducted without shutting down the operation. Say the design calls for six points of contact between the core tower and each floor for rotation and control. If each floor had twelve points of contact, and each point was designed to be repaired and/or replaced on the fly, then the rotation would no have to stop for any routine maintenance. If such maintenance was proactive enough, then such a building could operate indefinitely without being shut down.

Now whether or not its worth doing that way, is a good question. But if it mattered enough to the owner, then they could pay the required costs, and if they are rich enough then even those costs could be insignificant to them. Life support on a space station is an example. Build your station's life support system with enough redundancy and any part of the system can be maintained or replaced without shutting down the system.

I remember seeing an engineering project about changing a vehicle's tire without stopping the vehicle. Not practical, but possible.