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Science Fiction
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Kinetic Buildings And Psychotropic Houses
The Foson Foundation building in Shanghai's financial center is a kinetic building, thanks to its ever-changing facade.
Inspired by the traditional Chinese theaters, the Fosun Foundation is located right at the core of the Shanghai financial center. The building's dynamic facade consists of three layers of bronze tubes that resemble bamboos. Each of the bronze tubes flows around the structure's perimeter, consequently altering the building's appearance. After a coordinated flow cycle, the facade reveals the theater's stage on the balcony and people from the inside are treated with views of the modern Pudong district.
The 4,000 square meter building is comprised of three-floor levels. Its ground floor is dedicated to public spaces and information services as well as access within the building. The multifunctional hall and grand balcony are located on the building's second floor. And finally, the third floor houses the large exhibition hall.
(Via InterestingEngineering.)
Science fiction fans treasure the creative thinking of sf authors like JG Ballard, who described a house that constantly moves and reshapes itself in his 1962 short story The Thousand Dreams of Stella Vista:
...it consisted of six huge aluminum-shelled spheres suspended like the elements of a mobile from an enormous concrete davit. The largest sphere contained the lounge, the others successively smaller and spiraling upward into the air, the bedrooms and kitchen...
Stamers, the agent, left us sitting in the car... and switched the place on (all the houses in Vermillion Sands, it goes without saying, were psychotropic). There was a dim whirring, and the spheres tipped and began to rotate, brushing against the undergrowth.
...I got out and walked over to the entrance, the main sphere slowing as I approached, uncertainly steering a course toward me, the smaller ones following.
(Read more about Ballard's psychotropic house)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/23/2020)
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