Taiwan Tower: Building’s Facade Covered in Thousands of Wind Turbines

ORIGINAL: IndustryTap
By: David Russell Schilling
October 8th, 2013

Taiwan Tower
Decode Urbanism Office, a company based in Beijing, has designed a 1,150 foot (350m) skyscraper to be located in Taichung City, Taiwan, and house the city's Department of Urban Development, commercial concerns, museums, retail areas and exhibitions spaces. The building's design was inspired by the plum blossom, the national flower of China and Taiwan. The building's twisting and turning structure is intended to evoke the experience of plum blossoms bursting into bloom.

To attain this effect, the building's facade will be composed of thousands of small diamond shaped wind turbines that will produce enough energy to power the building. These mechanical wind generators are set into the facade grid acting as weathervanes and oscillating as wind skirts the building.

Each generator will have its own LED light that will produce light with an intensity that depends on wind speed. Lights will pulsate with the flow of wind across the building and the color of lights will change to correspond to changes in temperature and season. The building will incorporate concrete-filled steel profiles for additional structural support.

Decode Urbanism Office is an architecture firm to watch as it has recently won first prize in a competition to design Beijiao's Sports Center in Guangdong Province, China.

Taiwan-Wind-Tower (Image Courtesy www.dezeen.com)

Taiwan-Wind-Tower (Image Courtesy www.dezeen.com)
Taiwan-Wind-Tower (Image Courtesy www.designboom.com)
Beijiao Sports Center Plan, Guangdong Province, China (Image Courtesy www.designboom.com)
Beijiao Sports Center (Image Courtesy www.evolvo.com)
David Schilling
David lives in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, and regularly visits MIT, Harvard, Boston University, Northeastern, Boston's leading companies and labs, the stacks at Boston Atheneaum and Boston Public Library to uncover and research story ideas. You can also find David onGoogle+.

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