Revolving restaurant

A revolving restaurant or rotating restaurant is a tower restaurant designed to rest atop a broad circular revolving platform that operates as a large turntable. The building remains stationary and the diners are carried on the revolving floor. Such restaurants are often located on upper stories of hotels, communication towers, and skyscrapers.

Revolving restaurants and the prices of their dishes have been subject to ridicule.[1]

Design and construction

Revolving restaurants are designed as a circular structure, with a platform that rotates around a core in the center. The center core contains the building's elevators, kitchens, or other features. The restaurant itself rests on a thin steel platform, with the platform sitting on top of a series of wheels connected to the floor of the structure. Alternatively, some designs, like one in Memphis, Tennessee, have the platform mounted on tires. A motor rotates the restaurant at less than one horsepower. The speed of rotation is noted to vary, depending on preference.[2]

History

It is believed that Emperor Nero had a rotating dining room in his palace Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill with a magnificent view on the Forum Romanum and Colosseum. Archaeologists unearthed what they believed to be evidence of such a dining room in 2009.[3] Architect and designer Norman Bel Geddes proposed a rotating restaurant for the Century of Progress, the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, although it was not built.[4]

During the first half of the 20th century, several rotating bars were built in hotels and nightclubs. After World War II, dining was integrated into the concept, and in cities across the world revolving restaurants were built at a great pace. They were viewed as symbols of "modernity and progress".[1] A barrel-shaped, but stationary, restaurant on Fernsehturm Stuttgart, a TV tower in Stuttgart, Germany, built in 1956, is credited as the inspiration for the idea of a revolving restaurant. A revolving restaurant on Florianturm, a TV tower in Dortmund, Germany, was brought into service in 1959.[5]

Safety

One death has been attributed to the operation of a rotating restaurant. On April 14, 2017, a five-year-old boy's skull was crushed between the rotating part of the restaurant and a stationary wall at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, United States,[9] dying in hospital later that day.[10] A lawsuit filed against the restaurant by the child's parents was settled out of court.[11]

See also

• Floating restaurant
• Googie architecture
• List of revolving restaurants

External links