What you’re looking at is the side of a building designed [specifically for Dubai’s unique conditions] to grow it’s own exterior from sea salt that’s filtered through a series of exoskeletal pipes using scarcely more than evaporation and gravity. I’m partially creeped out (pretty much by anything that has an exoskeleton), partially amazed by the creative and scientific genius required to conceive such an idea, and partially wondering what happens if it rains.
It’s the Faulders Studio GEOtube and it’s just one incredible design from the Berkeley, California based architecture firm who’s work ranges from innovative commissioned corporate designs to…well…stuff like the GEOtube which is essentially Performance Art-chitecture. {I totally just made that up.}
Here’s what they say about the GEOtube in particular:
Born from unique environmental conditions, GEOtube is a new kind of urban sculptural tower. Gravity-sprayed with adjacent Persion Gulf waters, its building skin is entirely grown rather than constructed; is in continual formation rather than fully completed; and is created locally rather than imported. The world’s highest salinity for oceanic water is found in the Persian Gulf (and the Red Sea) – local salt water is supplied to GEOtube via a new 4.62 km buried pipeline and misted onto the tower’s exposed mesh. As the water evaporates and salt deposits aggregate over time, the tower’s appearance transforms from a transparent skin to a highly visible white solid plane. The result is a specialized habitat for wildlife that thrives is this environment, and an accessible surface for the harvesting of crystal salt.
Dude, I know – right?
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