Tall Building: Bahrain World Trade Center

$150 million and four years after ground broke, this building is now open and tenants are moving in.  Standing 240 meters tall (787 feet), it'll be fifty floors with fine restaurants, a food court, hotel space for the Sheraton, business center, car parking and a 9,600m² shopping center (103,333 square feet) with 160 boutique stores including Versace, Yves St Laurent, Hermes and Dolce, HAWTaction.com kiosk, Tiffanys, van Cleef and Arpel and Gabbana.

The buildings have a sassy curve to it to funnel the gulf's winds right into those prominent wind turbines.  Each one of the three turbines is 29 meters across (95 feet).  They posed great design challenges, what with them weighing a lot and creating torque when they turn.  Turbines have never been bolted to a building like this before.  (I have one bolted between my computer monitors, but no one seems to care.)  Traditional turbines, like Giant German Wind Turbine, actually can rotate from side to side so that they are always facing the wind.  That really isn't an option here, so Atkins had to plan more diligently (using laboratory wind tunnels) to define the angles of the building's "curves" to keep that wind source strong and consistent for all three propellers.  They act as wind foils, funneling the air right to the turbines.  Here's how well-crafted it is: The wind strength increases as you climb altitude, so to compensate so the turbines are getting the same energy, the building tapers, pulling more air into the bottom turbine.

When the wind turbines are going, full force, they are expected to provide 10-15% of the building's required power.  Heck, I'd love to knock 10-15% off my energy bill and greenhouse gas belches.  (Tackling Energy Use At Home.)

In addition, there will also be water recycling, connection to the district cooling system, thermal insulation, reflection pools for evaporative cooling, low-leakage windows and thermal glass with a low solar gain.  Those all sound good!