With an idea sure to raise hopes, eyebrows and hackles in roughly equal proportions, architectural outfit Morphocode has cooked up the idea of building loft apartments into offshore wind turbines.
Offshore turbines can be surprisingly large, with Siemens' 75-m B75 blades creating a sweep of 154-m diameter which is plenty big enough to swallow an Airbus A380. Morphocode predicts that offshore turbines will become larger still in the next few years, and points to the European Commission's 2008 Communication on offshore wind energy which said that the contribution made by offshore wind in Europe "can and must" increase "in the order of 30-40 times by 2020 and 100 times by 2030" in installed capacity compared to 2008 figures.
Morphocode's reasoning is not that such turbines will make ideal pads for those looking to away from it all (and then some), but that they will require the permanent presence of maintenance crews to watch over them (if not actually repair them), monitoring their performance to ensure that they're working optimally. Hence its wind turbine loft, an aerodynamically-shaped living space doubling as the rotor hub of the turbine.
Not that Morphocode has entirely divorced the romance of the sea from its concept. "Wind turbine loft is a secluded retreat in the vastness of the sea where time is marked by the rotation of the blades while the horizon line remains the only static element in this ever-changing landscape," it writes.
It's a charming idea, but, one suspects, an extremely improbable one.
Source: Morphocode, via Dvice
I know I do.... NOT!
Perhaps instead of a permament residence, perhaps for emergencies and as a work shop to repair items that need maintanence.
you'd have to sound isolate the entire structure away from the rest of the pylon. It would be incredibly expensive just with that addition.
The noise and vibrations would make it useless as a luxury dwelling, but as free housing with infinite free electric for a mildly trained worker(s), it could totally work.
My understanding is many (all?) turbine towers have an elevator for generator room and turbine access. In the event of a fire, I guess one could set up a hasty rappel? BASE jump? Cool escape pod launcher? How about a slide that spirals it's way down around the tower?