Once in a while, the Internet throws up something so amazingly stupid that one must sit back in awe at the thought that some guy got paid for it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, direct from Blazing Cat Fur, I give you the Line City.
The project, simply referred to as "The Line," is a smart megacity project being proposed in the planned city of Neom, in the northwestern part of the country. The ambitious project will be just 200 meters, or about 650 feet wide and 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet tall, but is planned to stretch for 170 kilometers, or just under 106 miles long.
It's a wall the height of the CN Tower, and it goes from Queens Quay to Bracebridge. And everybody in Ontario lives in it. That's what we're talking about. Except its actually planned for Saudi Arabia. 9 million people they say.
Somewhere out there in the world, some shit head architect talked an oil-rich Arab dude into pursuing this idea. And they GOT PAID! Like, actual money. Probably a shit-ton of money, given the super slick advertising video.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was Judge Dredd.
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| He was just told the building is 100 miles long. |
The second thing was Logan's Run.
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| Luxury living! But don't go outside. |
THX 1138?
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| Look, there's even a train. |
Really, the idea simply screams Hollywood futurist dystopian hell doesn't it? We've seen a lot of movies like this.
Sealed up in a really long sky-scraper in the desert with 9 million other people, your life at the mercy of the guy with his hand on the water tap. Can you say 'pumping pressure'? Sure you can. Roughly 750 pounds per square inch. You gotta lift water at ten pounds per gallon 500 meters into the air. How much does a column of water 500 meters tall weigh? Answer is: Twelve (12) tons. 24,000 pounds. You've got to LIFT it with a huge motherhumping water pump. This can be done, (there are two [2] buildings in the world taller than 500 meters) but not cheaply. What kind of steel pipe do you need for ~1000 PSI pressures (safety margin!!!)? The expensive kind. This is not the usual cast iron water main we're talking about here.
Oh, and no air conditioning. The city's 'micro-climate' will be created by 'natural ventilation'. Meaning hot, dry desert air will be sucked in on the shady side, heated by the 100 mile long, 500 meter high walls of glass, and then pushed out the top by convection. When the thermometer is hitting 115F out on the sand at lunch time, it'll be 130F by the time it exits out the top. Sounds awesome, sign me up.
The only thing missing was windmills on masts all along the upper edges of the building. I guess even an architect can figure out that if a normal 200 meter tall windmill uses a foundation with roughly 250 cubic meters of concrete in it, sticking one on top of a 500 meter tall glass wall might be... sketchy. Structurally speaking, y'know. Lots of bendy forces, right?
Also no word on what to do when there's a dust storm. The 'natural ventilation' is going to get a bit exciting with hurricane force winds blowing sand in there. And speaking of winds, what kind of gale-force breezes are they going to get with a 100 MILE long slab that's half a kilometer tall? Strong enough to pull the glass panes out, I would think. Also the sand-blasting is going to be a problem for that reflective coating.
What's the linear expansion on a wall of glass 100 miles long when the sun comes up? Half a mile? Couple hundred feet? More than an inch, anyway.
Snow storm? (Yes, it does occasionally snow in Saudi Arabia.)
Earthquake? Could be exciting if one of those suuuuper high pressure water pipes break. (750 PSI, baby. Think water-jet cutter. Spicy!)
Fire? You're 500 meters up a burning building in the middle of the desert. Head for the stairs? That's a lot of freakin' stairs, dewds. Letting out into... the desert. And don't forget, the train is -inside- the building. Where the fire is, right? No cars, no water.
And yet, here we are. Architect got paid, project moving forward.
5 comments:
Looks like one of Le Corbusier's hideous "Unité d'Habitation" designs. There was one of those in the French city I spent a lot of my childhood in, and it looked like a huge concrete block. Ugly as sin, and from what I heard (I never went in there), ugly inside as well.
The "Unknown" above was me, Robin Munn.
One of the huge problems that people like Frank Loyd Wright and Le Corbusier have historically ignored is:
Maintenance.
How do you repair and maintain the infrastructure of a building 500 meters tall and 100 miles long? That's a very big deal.
It's like a luxury condo building. After 20 years, they get pretty saggy and dated. All the suuuuper New Technology! in it is 20 years old. Can you still get parts for that stuff? Usually no, you can't. Try to find a manual for a 20 year old custom commercial touch screen.
It all boils down to a pretty simple dynamic. Can the people who live in the building -fix- the building? Themselves?
The answer, with arcologies and mega-towers and this Line thing is always, always NO. No frigging way. You need an engineer and expert millwrights to work on a thing like this, the level of expertise and ability required for maintenance on a nuclear facility.
Proper human-scale housing takes up space. You start shoving people into apartments, people start acting badly. All you have to do is visit any city and you'll see it.
What is it about authoritarian / dictatorial / socialistic governments that they constantly feel the need to build these sort of "mega-structures?" Dubai and the various mega-skyscrapers or those giant palm-tree shaped peninsulas they built? China and the empty cities they build with no one to live in them? North Koreas' giant pyramid hotel that's never been finished? This abomination?
My suspicion is it's a "Look! See! We can build things BIGGER than those awful, terrible, free-market(ish) countries!"
I suspect it has something to do with feelings of inadequacy. A building 500 meters tall and a hundred miles long simply screams "Look how big my dick is!"
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