Monday, January 10, 2011

Russian architect's interesting "Ark"

Russian architect Alexander Remizov has a unique new idea for "green" buildings. It doesn't look like a building at all. Instead, what he call the Ark looks like a partly unfolded, plastic-covered Slinky, or maybe a section of vacuum hose. It uses the latest tech, including wind power and transparent solar panels, to be efficient, but he says it doesn't need any unusual structural materials. They could be built large enough to house 10,000 people.
COMMENT: Unknown is whether anyone will finance a test of the idea. I hope someone does, at least for a small-scale trial. The idea that anyone could come up with a really new idea for a building is a little startling if you think about the millennia humans have been building stuff. Green construction is usually based on modifying longstanding ideas: this guy might have come up with the most radical notion since the geodesic dome.

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