Designed as NL Architects’ proposal for the Taiwan Tower Competition, the Tower of Power is their 300-meter tall building that will house various functions including a sightseeing room and recreational functions. It hopes to demonstrate revolutionary and simple ideas in green design and techniques of how to apply it today in order to create more energy than we use. The conceptual design is situated within a park overlooking the city and hopes to cause as little impact on the environment as possible while giving much. The major pull-factor for this design is that it generates energy. And we’re not talking about enough to power a lightbulb for a year, but enough to power potentially thousands of homes. NL Architects estimates that the 2000 rotors that will be connected to the vertical wind turbines will be able to generate about 8 MW a year (1 megawatt is able to power 240-400 households). 
So, next to being a useable building, this thing is also a vertical power plant located in the middle of the city. It is an investigation into the various types of wind turbines and power plants but also a proposal on how to create them so that they are aesthetically pleasing while functional in order to take it to new heights (HA! Get it?) Estimating from the renderings, but the turbines seem to be a bit larger than 7 feet. Coupled with the fact that there will be 2,000 of them, it’s going to be able to produce quite a bit of energy. Connected to it is a structural net which is reminiscent of bamboo scaffolding and appears just as flexible. It takes on a sinuous shape that wraps around the interior functions to create almost a chicken-wire mesh.
By Lyly Huyen
