Dubai’s new high-tech iPod-shaped apartment acts like Iron Man's armor

Dubai is soon to go all high-tech with its new technology filled, iPod-shaped apartment that is expected to open up by this year and has capabilities like that of comic hero Iron Man's armor.

The building, known as ‘The Pad’, was inspired by an iPod and has been under construction since the past 12 years. Finally, the Hong Kong architect James Law is almost done with it and the apartment will most likely be opened up later this year.

Previously known as the ‘iPad Tower’, the building was under construction in Dubai’s Business Bay since 2006 and is filled with excessive technology. Law says that with this high-tech building, he aims to fuse technology, software and architecture to build structures that are more responsive to people’s needs and desires today, reported Business Insider.

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“Architecture used to just be about the concrete, steel, the glass and the shape of a building. But now I think we’re living in a world where those materials are just the basic materials. There are now new materials like technology, smart material, bytes of content and interactivity.”

The building is tilted at a 6.5 degree angle to mimic an iPod in a dock. The 24-storey apartment contains 231 ‘intelligent’ apartments that feature ‘iReality’, a virtual reality projection wall projects 62 world destinations and can be used for video chatting, a bathroom that examines resident’s health in real time and displays it on the mirror, and RFID tags instead of apartment keys. Law says that the residents can add up more features similar to how people download apps from Apple’s App Store.

Moreover, the music and lights in the apartment can be customized to represent the residents’ moods. The lights can change color when someone rings doorbell, calls a phone or even when a favorite TV program is about to start. Heating and security system can be monitored from smartphones, wrote Futurism.

Law compared the building’s capabilities to the comic book hero Iron Man’s armor. “In this sense, once you put this armor on, you have extra capabilities and extra possibilities about how you can experience life. Like the Iron Man armor, the apartments are ‘able to adapt to the environment’.”

“We are all connected through information technology. You can’t live in isolation with a piece of architecture anymore, so that architecture becomes in itself just like a mobile phone,” Law further said.