Tuesday, March 31, 2015

the future Leaning Airport Tower of Wellington?


Airways New Zealand has lodged a resource consent application with the Wellington City Council to build a new 32-metre-high airport control tower, designed to "lean" into the prevailing northerly wind at an angle of 12.5 degrees.

The nine-storey Rongotai tower is proposed for an industrial area at the southern end of Tirangi Rd, on airport land near Lyall Bay. It would give Wellington Airport's 20 air traffic controllers 360-degree views from the lookout area on the top floor.

The tower is intended to change colour according to the wind direction -- blue for southerly and purple for northerly.

Architect Evzen Novak, of Studio Pacific Architecture, says plans involved solid base isolation foundation features, which would ensure the building was secure in an earthquake and a southerly wind.

The degree of lean would be considerably more than Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa, which today is about 4 degrees. Before 1990, when remedial work was done to correct its lean, it was at an angle of about 10 degrees.

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