Building Features and Designs for the Cities of the Future

Can the decay of buildings be stopped? What materials will be used in these new buildings? What is a living building? Will the buildings of tomorrow move around?

These are some of the ideas that have been answered by the architects for buildings of the future. Below are some of the potential answers to these questions.

When thinking about future buildings we often envisage a sleek, streamlined skyline of shiney and slender skyscrapers. But what if these future buildings were composed of modular components that can be moved around and be repositioned. Well with the design plans from ARUP this certainly looks like a promising prospect. This design is known as a living building as due to the buildings mobility, it appears as though the integral structure of the building itself is alive.

Dubai has a similar plans for moving buildings in which the floors of skyscrapers are going to rotate around to give a full 360 degree panoramic view of the surrounding scenery. It will take a steady full hour for each floor to undergo a full revolution around the central column. The architectural engineer behind the design is also reported to have said that the building will also be completely self-sustainable and eco friendly.

Furthermore going back to the original concept of the living building, other features of this complex include this building being capable of adjusting itself to the need of the building’s inhabitants. These adjustments allow the building to respond to changes in the weather system. Moreover, the actual movement of the building itself is also said to be reconfigured by using robots that produce more resources than they consume, making this huge edifice more energy efficient.

Another quirky idea for future prospects is wondering how we might decorate the homes of the future. Interestingly the idea of paint that harnesses solar power is not too far away from being used. The graphene based paint works a bit like a solar panel in capturing energy from any available sunlight. This will therefore potentially provide wide spread clean energy to every available home in the future.

However the implications for a graphene based paint go a lot further than functioning just as a solar cell. Graphene has also been described as a ‘wonder paint’ that can stop the process of corrosion on the materials used in buildings. This means that buildings could effectively last a lot longer and that graphene paint could end the dilapidation process where natural decay makes buildings more unsafe to inhabit over time.

To summarise, the buildings of the future have been designed to be capable of movement, and eco friendly. They can also be decorated by paint that halts corrosion and harvests the natural clean energy of light from the sun.