The Elusive David Fisher

We discover this week that architect David Fisher, the man behind the rotating residential tower, can be found and is willing to talk.

Bahrain editor Ben Millington tracks down and gets an exclusive interview with the elusive Fisher, the architect of the rotating Dynamic Towers. You’ll recall that Fisher has met with considerable criticism over whether his project is a fantasy, including some shots from this publication.

Fisher goes a long way to answering those critics. He correctly points out that the project should be judged on its merits and not on a personal basis. His CV has been questioned and his qualifications have been challenged. There is some confusion, created not only by Fisher but his publicists as well, as to whether he fibbed on his CV about his educational background. And his critics claim that being the king of pre-fabricated bathrooms does not give him license to build a complicated structure that thousands of people are expected to call home.

If anything Fisher has learned a lesson that if one is going to announce to the world a radical building project, even by Dubai standards, his credentials better be spotless. No hyperbole allowed.

I do agree with Fisher that if a rotating tower is to be constructed, it better be built on the simplest technology possible. He points out to Millington that he picked building re-fabricated bathrooms as an area of expertise because it is the most complicated part of constructing buildings. Maintenance is easier on a pre-fab section of a building because it does not affect the rest of the structure.

Fisher wants to repair and maintain a building without “using a hammer” and sees no need to tear up perfectly good portions of a building to make repairs elsewhere. He also wants buildings to have a shelf life longer than 100 years, which is ambitious for this region.

OK, I can get on board with that concept. Yet Fisher is vague on other aspects of his project. He talks about “smart technology” but gives few details. Perhaps the most important aspect of the driving mechanism to rotate each floor of the tower is its hydraulic system. But he refuses to provide details.

Perhaps the biggest red flag is the fact that he has backtracked on guaranteeing wind turbines as a power source for surrounding buildings. That was a huge selling point of the project in the first place, but now it appears it has fallen on the list of his priorities. He expects to break ground in two to three months, but he is still in the process of developing the wind turbines.

Well, good luck with that.

Rob Wagner is the Editor of Construction Week