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“Shapeshifting” Architecture from Dubai

CNN reports on a phenomenal “shape-shifting” building going up in Dubai known as the Dynamic Tower. The building has independent movement across each of its floors via the use of wind turbines: it can be “moved” constantly throughout the day, and appear essentially unique in every moment. The sheer scale of the project should not be underestimated. Its architect, New York-based architect David Fisher, says that

It’s not a piece of architecture somebody designed today and that’s it. It remains forever. It’s designed by life, shaped by time.

The building boasts a number of innovations, including being entirely prefabricated (which will construct in six days what typically takes nearly six weeks), as well as generating enough wind power to sustain similar-sized buildings (well, maybe not…).

There is some (predictable) skepticism, since the architect has never built a skyscraper before, but he claims that a solid team is in place to help work out all the kinks. Either way it’s truly stunning, both conceptually and visually.

I am becoming increasingly certain that an arriving movement in art will involve “radical dynamism”, or the alteration of work as it is being displayed, in a way that is not at all performance art. This has certainly been seen before (on some levels) in the form of mobiles and moving sculptures (both of which are, in many ways, still performance art) but I’ve become very interested in the concept of work that has both inalterable (permanent) change as well as unique (non-cylical) motion, perhaps derived in some way from the technological deluge of the Web and our daily lives (ie. in response to memes). This building certainly hits on the latter, but short of the wear and tear of everyday use it does not (yet) accomplish the former. Still, it may help usher in the “dynamic era”… and I would love to see any examples of this kind of work, if they exist.