tone: BIANCO ECOSOSTENIBILE
work: PHARE TOWER

More than a building, the PHARE TOWER, destined to rise up in Paris’s Defence district by 2012, will be a twisting sensual body sheathed in a “skin” of mobile glass panels to shield the light. The rood will house a central wind-power device which, the Californian designer Tom Mayne says “Will be able to generate enough electricity to heat and condition its spaces and rooms for five months of the year. “

Phare Tower is not the only one of its kind. From London to Mumbai new towers hundreds of metres tall are rising up. They use sophisticated eco-sustainable technologies to capture sun and wind power in the most effective ways and look quite different to the traditional parallelepiped shape with more jointed and imaginative profiles.

The tower in the shape of a spear designed by Norman Foster in Siberia is similar. Its base its multifaceted like a diamond to bring in scanty sunlight into the building’s heart – a huge gallery-cum-hall. By exploiting the bio-climatic principle of the veranda effect, heat is accumulated and channelled throughout all the other inside spaces and areas. Then there’s also the Studio Park Palafito Tower designed to handle the tropical temperatures of the Arab Emirates which will employ solar energy to produce a refreshing cloud sprayed out by 60-metre tall columns throughout the entire building. This will allow fresh air to ventilate the entire area.