The Lighthouse: An Innovative Green Skyscraper

Dubai is on a building spree, it has many constructions ongoing, one of them was an Energy tower and this is another environment friendly building concept, “The Lighthouse”, which will be built in the heart of Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) area.

This unique lighthouse uses three 225 kilowatt wind turbines (29 meters in diameter) at the top of the building and 4000 photovoltaic panels on the south facing area of the building. The solar panels don’t have the means to adjust with the changing position of the Sun, but still will be able to garner more energy from the Sun. The turbines on the hand will adjust to wind directions and harness wind energy efficiently with its wind vanes.

The skyscraper will be designed by the Atkins group; it will be a 400 meter office tower and will reduce its total energy consumption by as much as 65% and also water consumption by as much as 40%.

To achieve this goal the building makes use of extensive passive solar architecture, and many low water engineering solutions including recovery strategies for both energy and water.

Besides this energy saving feature, the building will also use materials from sustainable sources, they are considering a steel frame solution for this feature. They will also have inter connecting vertical gardens to enhance the social aspects of the building.

This building will utilize a total construction area of 140,000 square meters. This will be the first of many buildings Atkins Group is planning to develop in Dubai, so that all these buildings become environmentally friendly, self sufficient and use renewable energy to meet their power needs.

I am hearing more and more every day about these buildings overseas, I wish they will build more here also, all the new buildings that crop up are doing the same guzzle energy as much.