Behold The Dubai 'Lighthouse'

Green Tower To Chew Less Power



There has been an exciting, inspiring explosion of creativity in 'green' architecture in the past few years. But this 'Lighthouse' tower planned for Dubai is easily the most extraordinary design we've come across, so far.

The top third of the building is filled with huge wind turbines.

Here's some detail on 'The Lighthouse' from the developers :

...the 400-metre luxury office tower aspires to be a low carbon commercial building which aims to reduce its total energy consumption by up to 65% and water consumption by up to 40%. This will be achieved through the use of passive solar architecture, many low energy, low water engineering solutions, recovery strategies for both energy and water and building integrated renewables – including large scale wind turbines and photovoltaics.

During the development of the design Atkins will map and manage the embodied energy content of the building and select materials from sustainable sources, so that impact on global resources is controlled. Already this is leading designers to consider a steel frame solution for this structure.

According to a report on TreeHugger, the three 225 kilowatt wind turbines will be each be a whopping 29 metres in diameter, and some 4000 photovoltaic panels will soak up the sun's energy to help keep the whole building running.