The ultimate marriage of aesthetics and functionality is unarguably the Transportable Tourist Tower, designed by Portuguese architect Jose Pequeno, in collaboration with the dst group, made its debut at the 2010 shanghai expo and has since made its way across the globe.
With the combination of a cleverly designed prefabricated structure that optimizes interior area and new revolutionary technologies, the tower represents a new type of habitability that could prove extremely useful beyond its current use as a tourist information post and temporary installation.
The construct can be built with almost any wood – a potentially 100% renewable resource – and glass, a 100% recyclable material. needing as little as 10 square-meters for its installation, the three storey vertical tower returns an extremely efficient floor to area ratio as it takes up a very small footprint.
Its various facade screens and panels filter the necessary light which make it adaptable to any location and climate, and although it takes up a minimal area on site, it contains a bathroom, kitchen, dining area, living space, study, bedroom, and a rooftop deck.
All in all, the Transportable Tourist Tower is an industrialised project and a multifunctional sustainable architecture. It is, simultaneously, an urban modularity and evolutionary procedure, of environmental integration and touristic mobility, in an innovative mixture that represents a new concept in habitability.
With a minimal design and a strong revealing image, bold at the level of the structural solution, ttt combines natural lighting and energetic potential through active and passive solar systems. Its physical dimension and inner space is optimised with resort to the prevalence of a harmonious and integrated relation with the outer surroundings. Predominantly materialised through wood, a natural and 100% renewable building material, but also through glass, 100% recyclable, it privileges a policy of reuse and presents a significantly reduced constructive impact.
