Monday, June 30, 2008

Dubai's rotating skyscraper: a fraud?


Italian "architect" Dr. David Fisher is planning to build an 80-story building in Dubai with rotating floors that would give it an ever-changing shape. He also wants to build similar towers in Russia and New York. The building does look cool (if structurally dubious), but Fisher's credentials and experience leave something to be desired:

WCBStv.com: Fisher acknowledges that he is not well known, has never built a skyscraper before and hasn't practiced architecture regularly in decades. But he insisted his lack of experience wouldn't stop him from completing the project, which has attracted top design talent, including Leslie E. Robertson, the structural engineer for the World Trade Center and the Shanghai World Financial Center. 

"I did not design skyscrapers, but I feel ready to do so," Fisher said.

That's a relief. And next comes the possibility that Fisher may be a fraud:

In a biography he had been distributing for months, he said...he received an honorary doctorate from "The Prodeo Institute at Columbia University in New York." No such institution exists, however, and Columbia said it had never awarded Fisher an honorary degree. 

Asked to explain the discrepancy, Fisher said, through his New York publicists, that he had been awarded the degree by the Catholic University of Rome during a ceremony in 1994 held at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, which is near Columbia's campus. 

Asked again to clarify the name of the school that conferred the degree, Fisher's publicists said in an e-mail that "Dr. Fisher did receive an honorary doctorate in Economics from Pre Deo University, but it has been removed from his bio because he wants to be entirely accurate and cannot be with this information."

Come again?

Source

See also: Dynamic Architecture comes to Dubai...

And this: Dubai, dazzling the desert.

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