The buildings, they are a changin'

It takes the cake. Perhaps it changes the rules of the building game too.

A rotating building. Or, a building that changes shape, call it what you like.

That's the idea architect David Fisher came up with after taking in an expansive view of Manhattan from a friend's apartment.

Instead of just one revolving floor, like other buildings around the world, every floor in Fisher's tower will rotate.

The architecture is a way to make the most of a good location - Moscow and Dubai in this case.

And it will be green too. The prefabricated skyscrapers will keep changing shape as each floor rotates around a central axis powered by the sun and wind.

A 70-floor building has received planning clearance for Moscow, and an 80-floor structure in Dubai is awaiting approval. Fisher hopes to build them by the end of 2010.

The Florence-based Israel-born architect, who has never built a skyscraper before, says he would also like to build a third dynamic tower in New York City. But currently he has no firm plans for such a project.

"I call this building a machine for living," he told a news conference at New York's more traditionally designed Plaza Hotel on Tuesday.

Apart from swimming pools and gardens, the buildings will also be fitted with elevators for cars so that residents can park right outside their homes.

The towers are expected to generate enough electricity for themselves and other nearby buildings from solar panels and wind turbines fitted horizontally between each floor.

People who own an entire floor will be able to simply speak to control the rotation, with speeds varying from an hour to three hours for each full rotation.

Leslie Robertson, who was the structural engineer for New York's World Trade Center Twin Towers, which collapsed on Sept 11, 2001 after being hit by two hijacked planes, is an engineering consultant for Fisher's project.

Asked if New Yorkers would feel queasy about a dynamic high-rise, Robertson conceded it would not suit everybody. "If you're concerned about issues like that you don't take the apartment at the top, you take a townhouse," he said.