21 March 2009

Clash of the Super Tower Arcologies

Above is pictured the Ultima Tower, a 500 story, 10,560 foot tower meant to house a million residents. Cost in 1991 dollars: $150 billion. Source
At 13,123 feet high, the massive, mountain-shaped building envisioned by Japan's Taisei Construction Company would overshadow Mount Fuji itself by nearly 700 feet. That's the equivalent of NINE Empire State Buildings stood one upon the other!

The building, known as the X-Seed 4000, is designed to house up to one million residents on as many as 800 floors! Designers have had to consider tricky questions of temperature and pressure differentials between the base and topmost floors, and are looking to utilize solar power to solve these and other critical issues. The cost, you ask? Somewhere between $300 and $900 billion...Source
Either structure is meant to house a million inhabitants, but the X-Seed is a bit taller and perhaps more carefully engineered up to this point.A more modest arcology is the Crystal Island project designed for Moscow by Foster and Partners.

Paolo Soleri envisioned arcologies as solutions to the problem of urban sprawl, and destruction of natural habitat by human development. He designed arcologies for land, sea, and outer space. But until significant advances are made in strength vs. weight vs. cost of building materials, truly huge arcologies will likely have to wait.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Hell_Is_Like_Newark said...

what percentage of those million people get an apartment with a window? Its awfully wide at the base.

Saturday, 21 March, 2009  
Blogger Ugh said...

I was thinking about this concept seriously because I do believe that the suburbs can't expand forever - it makes no practical or economic sense in the long run. A couple of things bother me though...

Fire for one thing. I think there has to be an absolutely fool proof reaction to fire control. Also, anarchy breaking out in the lower regions preventing people from coming or going as they please. I'm sure I could think of more. The technology and materials science would be the easy part - it's the social aspects (people being people) that would worry me.

Monday, 23 March, 2009  
Blogger al fin said...

From Neal Craig:

Don't want to be a spoilsport but it looks to me like the stuff up to the world trade towers will make up more than 50% of the space at a small fraction of the cost, indeed if that level had straight walls going up from the edge of the base it might equal 100% of the space.

Spectacular though such towers may be if you can do this for $300-900 bn they could build a base sized structure the height of the WTT for $50-150 bn which, while less pretty, as housing, leisure & work for 1 million, looks like somebody might actually make a good profit.

Neal, I'm assuming you meant this comment to be for this posting rather than the previous posting,
AF

Tuesday, 24 March, 2009  

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