Underground living: The death of the skyscraper

[JDRCRASH]

Obviously none of us agree with the title, but it was only a matter of time before someone proposed this...

Underground living: The death of the skyscraper





19th September 2011
By Stephen Ebert

It could be time to say sayonara to the skyscraper and hello to underground living. If Mexican architects have their way we’ll all be living in Earthscrapers over 30 stories below ground. Forget loft living, the next trend might be subterranean suburbia.

For a glimpse into the blueprint of future city-dwelling, look no further than Mexico City. Rather than ask “who can go highest?” BNKR Arquitectura’s highly ambitious Earthscraper project is instead asking “how low can you go?”

Burrowing down 35 stories beneath the heart of Mexico City, the Earthscraper defies everything the skyscraper stands for. It’s an ambitious rebuttal to architectural obsession with high-rise, so-called space efficient living.

Shaped like an inverted pyramid, the Earthscraper will burrow downwards 775,000 square metres, preserving the existing city square above.

By building below the city, the landscape above ground is left looking relatively unchanged. Concerts, open-air exhibitions and military parades regularly take place on the historic landmark above the Earthscraper, and it’s important to Mexico’s rich history that they continue.

Just as the Aztecs would build pyramids to worship their deities, with new pyramids built on top of the remaining structures, the Earthscraper is designed with many layers. Current plans are for the first 10 levels to house a museum of ancient Aztec and Mayan artifacts. . .


. . . Read more. . .

Source: http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/2644/...he-skyscraper/

[LeeWilson]

An interesting idea. Somehow I don't think this would go over well in Mexico or Japan or anywhere with earthquakes though. And isn't Mexico City built on top of an underground lake? I guess maybe the people at the bottom could have waterfront property.

[unusualfire]

Wouldn't an earthquake destroy that pretty quickly?

[mthq]

natural light is absolutely a must if people are going to stay sane. This article looks like the kind of read found in a 1950s issue of Popular Mechanics. Very sci-fi, but not practical.

[youngregina]

well if you look at the diagram, it shows that the building is open almost all the way to the bottom level, allowing for sunlight to reach the depths of the structure.

[tayser]

They started that trend in central Australia years ago!


Coober Pedy - The Underground City

[The_Architect]

Yea, that's a good idea in a high-seismic activity area.

[MolsonExport]

Only a matter of time until somebody proposed this?

Men living in caves predates skyscraper living.

oh, and this:


I give you the depthscraper:


c/o david zondy: http://davidszondy.com/future/city/depthscraper.htm

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by mthq

natural light is absolutely a must if people are going to stay sane. This article looks like the kind of read found in a 1950s issue of Popular Mechanics. Very sci-fi, but not practical.

Agreed, I wouldn't live there because natural light would be minimal at best.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by youngregina

well if you look at the diagram, it shows that the building is open almost all the way to the bottom level, allowing for sunlight to reach the depths of the structure.

Which is great if the sun is directly overhead all day, but obviously any time before around 10 and after 2 is going to mean that the angle is too great for sunlight to get in.

[JDRCRASH]

^ Maybe if the ceiling was glass and the interior became more atrium-like, perhaps they could install some sort of giant mirrors to capture more sunlight earlier in the day?

[The Chemist]

Originally Posted by JDRCRASH

^ Maybe if the ceiling was glass and the interior became more atrium-like, perhaps they could install some sort of giant mirrors to capture more sunlight earlier in the day?

Sort of like the interior of the Reichstag in Berlin?

http://image.rol.vn/Resources/2009/0..._L1_H6_750.jpg

If you start doing stuff like that, though, plus all the extra difficulty of excavation, I just don't see how this is an any more efficient use of space, money, or energy than building a skyscraper.

[llamaorama]

mentions of this silly thing have been going around the net

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/20...und-buildings/

A great dystopian sci-fi plot- in the future due to excessive city planning regulations, a small elite population reside in a perfect society above ground while untouchables are pushed down into living in a subterranean version of the kowloon walled city. Let the revolution commence.

[Attrill]

As others have said, light would be minimal at best. The things that really bust it though it is how hard it is to keep water out of subterranean structures, along with the continual pressure of the earth pressing on all sides of it all the time. The thing would need to be built like a bunker (because that's what it would be).

It would take far fewer materials and maintenance to have an equivalent above ground structure than to build that thing. And that goes for any region of the world, not just the earthquake prone and swampy land of Mexico City. It might make sense to build down to 2 or 3 stories in a very hot and arid climate, but anything built that deep anywhere in the world is going to cost a fortune (with no real justification for the cost).

[mhays]

Water does sound like the largest problem. You can build a bathtub. You can have a great pumping system for when water gets in. You can build in redundancies. But you can't control what happens when an earthquake causes a gash that literally lets an underground river flow in, or the backup generator goes out, not that the pumps would likely be designed to handle a whole river. It's easy to imagine flooding several floors before people could escape, and continuing to flood the whole damn thing in a few hours. On a smaller scale, it's easy to imagine leaks that would overtake the capacity of a pumping system, or a system going down, or being managed improperly....

Here's another problem. Look at that inverted cylinder. If the same cylinder was an "outie" rather than an "innie", it would have twice the window area with the same square footage, even if they didn't keep the atrium. Rather than getting wider toward the windows, apartments/offices would get narrower toward the windows. With typical apartment sizes, you'd be down to one room with windows.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by youngregina

well if you look at the diagram, it shows that the building is open almost all the way to the bottom level, allowing for sunlight to reach the depths of the structure.

I'll get back with you on that when I move to my new office where my desk faces a fairly large light court. Big and open, I'll be able to see the sky, but something tells me staring across at the next set of windows will get old fast.

So what if it has sunlight shining down. The monotony of looking left, right, across, down and up and seeing nothing but the same windows all around would be terrible. There's a way to design this to be better, but involves making a large canyon and completely cutting out the repetition.

Thought it's a concept, and concepts don't have to be specific, it should at least provide a general answer to the big questions like life safety. Can you imagine going UP in the event of a fire? You'd exhaust population of this thing trying to escape going up long stairways only eventually to stop and block crowds below. What about heat from a fire? Would a large enough atrium dissipate enough heat, or would it just remain trapped and burn all the occupants?

[babybackribs2314]

Beyond all the issues discussed already, how would a tremendously expensive project like this get built in Mexico of all places?

[RC14]

I don't see any reason for building a structure like this. It's an inovative idea but not a useful or practical one.
Not only would there be a lack of natural light, but there would be nothing to look out your window at. That would be depressing. I would never live in a place like that.
Like everyone else is saying, I don't think this would be any cheaper then building a skyscraper, in fact I think it would cost at least twice as much. The high building costs would need to be passed on to tenents and who wants to pay extra to live in a place with no views, no natural light, and I'm guessing, terrible cell phone service.

[brickell]

Why don't we combine the two concepts; let's hollow out a mountain and live there. Underground living with killer views!

Seems just as practical at least.

[Aleks]

that proposal looks cool if it stopped at the first tier and had a realistic system to support the massive (glass?) plaza above.