Concept of the skyscraper "Teeter-Totter"(with Arch Group International LLC, USA)

Architects: Aleksei Goriainov, Mikhail Krymov, Irina Cociuc, Mikhail Ivliev, Kristina Karacharskova, Anna Hludeneva, Artem Netsvetaev

Supervisor: Irina Cociuc

Design: 2016

Today, there are many alternative sources of energy. As a rule, they deal with various natural phenomena such as wind, sunlight, water flow or tides. All of these sources of energy have a common drawback: they are not universal. So in a place where there is not enough wind or sun, or where there is no ocean or a hot spring nearby, there is nothing to draw energy from. In addition, power plants that produce energy from alternative sources are usually large. As a result, for a skyscraper in the city center there is only one source: the city grid. Considering  the size of a skyscraper , this creates a serious additional load for the city.

But what about  the source  of energy that is everywhere? Especially when the skyscraper can create this energy source out of people?

People inhabit a skyscraper, and in any skyscraper there is a constant movement of large numbers of people - like a tidal wave. Thousands of people enter the building in the morning and they leave it in the evening.

This changes the weight of the building. In the morning, it adds a few hundred ton, and in the evening, it becomes lighter. This weight can be used to generate electricity during the day.

This means that  in the morning, under the weight of a huge mass of people and cars in the parking lot, the building starts to move down making generators work; at night, due to a counterbalance, the skyscraper moves up to its original position and generates electricity again.

This process is the operating principle of our skyscraper.

Of course, the building would need a huge counterweight. There is no point to make it out of concrete or steel because the cost of the counterweight will be comparable to the cost of building materials since they have the same weight. Therefore, water will work as the best counterbalance. In addition to its low cost, water can be used for other purposes. The effort can be transmitted from the building to the counterweight via a hydraulic system.

Our building constantly moves up and down. This movement allows to realize a variety of kinetic versions of the facade creating a "living" building. In the instant case, we create kind of an exoskeleton around the building - a three-dimensional mechanical structure that compresses and decompresses during the day. The moving components of this structure contain generators that transform the deformation into electricity.

In order to allow people to enter the building from the ground level, we designed long spiral ramps that work like a huge spring. As a result, people can always reach the building entrance level.

A residential building can also act as a counterweight since it is subject to the same processes, but it would move in antiphase to the office building. Moreover, it is possible to create a city network of such balanced skyscrapers, which will constantly re-distribute their weight among themselves.