Dubai architectural icon set to turn building design a full 360

Plans have been announced to build an 80 storey luxury residential building with a single dwelling per floor that allows each floor to rotate independently. Designed by Italian architect David Fisher, the project will enable each luxury apartment to rotate a full 360 degrees over the course of a few hours. This ability will transform the external look of the building with the architect suggesting "This building never looks the same, not once in a lifetime".

Powered by environmentally friendly wind-turbines, the building will generate enough energy to not only support the rotation of the building, but also feed electricity back to the grid. While architectural marvels like those found in Dubai may be a while off for Australia, careful investigation of global architecture may indicate the future trends in High-rise luxury apartment living including Single-dwelling per floor living arrangements and environmentally geared construction including wind and solar power combined with unique landmark-style designs.

The luxury apartments, which will take between one and three hours to make a complete rotation, will cost from $3.7M to $36M.

A second version of the Dynamic Tower will feature a retractable helicopter pad and is planned for Moscow.

"I call these buildings designed by time, shaped by life," said the Florence-based architect, who has never built a luxury high-rise before.

The luxury apartment tower is estimated to cost $700m to build and should be finished by 2010. Watch BBC video by clicking here.