In London’s Elephant & Castle neighborhood, across the river from St. Paul’s Cathedral, an innovative high rise has opened. Standing at a monumental 482 feet, it is London’s tallest residential building, and is seemingly best described as a hybrid of the two part’s of its district’s name: it is part hulking goliath, and part palace of eco-architectural innovation. The Strata, as the structure is called, is distinguished not just by its imposing 43-story height, but also by the fact that it is the first skyscraper with a built-in system of wind turbines, which should generate eight percent of the energy used by residents of the tower.

The Strata cost $173.6 million to build, but 25 percent of the more than 400 residences in the building will be offered to those with incomes of less than $92,000 (£60,000). Its completion also represents the first stage in a six-year-old $2.3 billion project to revitalize the industrial neighborhood by the year 2020. With the rest of the area still underdeveloped, the tower looks like something out of Fritz Langs "Metropolis," garnering nicknames like the "Electric Razor," and (from London mayor Boris Johnson) the "Lipstick."

The Atkins-designed Bahrain World Trade Center in Manama is the only other structure in the world to feature wind turbines, although for that construction the turbines are suspended between the towers, rather than incorporated into the buildings themselves. Whether or not sky-scraping turbines become a trend, the symbolic importance of this kind of motion toward green-mindedness has already received critical acclaim.

"You've got to take your hat off to the design team for delivering a building that captures the imagination," head of the U.K. Green Building Council Paul King told the Guardian. "I doubt wind power will become a common feature in high-rise inner city projects, but without this type of bold innovation, how would we ever know? Developments like this show that sustainability is increasingly becoming mainstream. That's something everyone should celebrate."