The skyscraper, capable of independently generating electricity, was presented by the Arch group architects at the international architectural competition of the Evolo magazine. And although the project was not included in the shortlist, the idea behind it deserves a separate story. It has not yet been tested empirically, but, according to the authors, if successful, it can turn over the idea of alternative energy sources.
There are many of the latter in the modern world: people have learned to use the energy of the sun, wind, earth and water. But in all cases, the amount of energy generated directly depends on climatic conditions. In regions where there is little wind and sunlight - and in Russia there are most of them - such methods are not very effective. They are also of little use in megalopolises with dense buildings and huge electricity consumption. Thus, as before, no universal energy sources capable of competing with nuclear and hydroelectric power plants have been found.
The search for a universal source of energy has long occupied the heads of the Arch group bureau Alexei Goryainov and Mikhail Krymov. “Everyone would like the car to provide itself with fuel without refueling,” explains Alexey Goryainov. “What if the building is capable of independently generating energy anywhere on the planet, regardless of the sun, wind, tides or geothermal sources?”
The next question that the designers asked themselves: how can the building generate energy? After all, such a source is needed, which is wherever a house appears. The answer came by itself - at the expense of people filling and leaving it every day, who will work like a kind of "tidal wave". A large office center in a skyscraper was taken as an example. According to preliminary calculations, the building with a height of 600 meters can accommodate about 20 thousand people. Their mass is added to the weight of cars that are proposed to be parked at the bottom of the skyscraper. Taken together, this gives a huge figure - several hundred thousand tons. In the morning, from 8 to 10, people fill the buildings, in the evening they leave, and his weight changes. The authors propose to use the difference in weight during the day for the production of electricity.
The architects developed a mechanism thanks to which a skyscraper, under the weight of the people filling it, could go down about 20 meters underground, starting the generators, and at night rise back, again generating electricity. “Let's imagine that a skyscraper is initially balanced by some kind of counterweight,” explains Goryainov. - When people fill a skyscraper, it starts to sink because it has become heavier than the counterweight. In the evening, people go home, and the counterweight returns the skyscraper to its original position. Thus, moving up and down like a piston, it constantly generates energy."
The architects suggested using water as a counterbalance. A counterweight made of concrete or metal, equal in mass to a skyscraper, is ineffective in this case due to its high cost. Another thing is water - at a minimum cost, it can also be used as an artistic tool. For example, in their project, the authors surrounded the area around the tower with a reservoir, hiding two or four containers with water under it. When a skyscraper goes underground, cubes filled with water rise above the surface of the reservoir. Excess water flows down their edges like waterfalls, turning the structure into a kind of kinetic sculpture. At night, the containers, the mass of water inside which remains constant, are again submerged under the water.
Another counterweight option is a reverse-cycle residential building. In the morning, people leave their apartments, going to work and school, and in the evening they come back. Of course, in this case, the process of filling the building with people is much more extended in time. But even this, according to the calculations of the architects, will be enough to at least partially fulfill the role of a counterweight. The effort from the building to the counterweight - be it water or a residential building - is proposed to be transmitted using a hydraulic system.
There are various options for the location of skyscrapers in the city. It would be possible to create a whole network of skyscrapers, constantly redistributing weight among themselves. The authors propose to install a static garden tower between the residential and office towers. It does not move anywhere, but serves as a rest area for office workers. Connected with the main buildings by spiral passages, such a tower would become the final link in the creation of a fragment of a full-fledged urban space that can provide a person with everything he needs.
It is assumed that the building will descend smoothly enough and imperceptible for the people inside. And the entrance will be a ramp that works like a spring, changing the ascent angle from a steep morning to a gentle day. A similar ramp is provided for cars.
The exterior of the building is still schematic, the authors say. For the competition, they proposed a tower with a glass facade surrounded by a kind of exoskeleton - a three-dimensional mechanical structure that contracts and expands during the day following the vertical movement of the building. Therefore, with a change in the position of the skyscraper, its silhouette will also change, now stretching into a string, then bristling like a hedgehog. Additional generators can be located in the movable nodes of the exoskeleton, which also generate electricity. In general, the constant movement of the skyscraper makes it possible to implement a variety of kinetic options for the facades. For example, you can make a double facade with one movable and a second static layer: when moving, the pattern of the walls will constantly change, provoking the appearance of a moire effect. There was also a more fantastic idea, according to which the building could not only move vertically, but also rotate around its axis - when lowering, it would be screwed into the ground.
Until there is an exact idea of the amount of energy generated in this way, its effectiveness is not clear. But if the proposed method will even partially reduce energy costs, and in any high-rise building they are huge, if the generated energy is enough at least for engineering communications, then this will be a great achievement, the authors are sure.
