 The Hyper Building
The Hyper Building is a one-kilometer-high tower surrounded by a double set of concentric exedrae. The exedra is a semi-circular edifice that can host a large spectrum of urban activities. Tower and exedrae are not separable.
The present outline ties together the many facets of the design. The guiding idea is:
The focused vis-a-vis the scattered or geometrically speaking ;
The radial versus the orthogonal.
While the orthogonal is neutral, the radial implies center, radius and circumference.
The tower is at the center, the radial is the stage for the horizontal mobility, the circumference is made of two multi-level exedrae.
As just mentioned, the items I am about to state briefly, are laced by a continuous thread (precedent-consequent).
The items, in order of appearance, and in their heterogeneity:
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People, us, are around thanks to the female/male sexual differentiation. Eros has been the constant drive in the species. This providential obsession is inscribed and described in the human habitat and the arts.
In an analogy, the tower stands for the lingam, the male; the concentric exedrae stand for the female, the womb.
The interpenetration of the two generates
the "fecundity" (complexity) of the city, guarded, so to speak, from intrusion, the otherness of nature that comes wave-like to break on the shoulders of the outer exedra.
The female/male analogy points to the potential richness of the urban effect developing at the many physical levels of the Hyper Building, unencumbered by the unfriendly automobile mode.
The pedestrian has full sovereignty, enhanced by elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, electric conveyances and bicycles.
With the sun as prime agent , the design shows a north-south plane of symmetry coherent to the same plane of symmetry defined by its daily and seasonal trajectories.
Since in the multi-story structure a variety of activities are juxtaposed, the structure becomes a stratified sequence of focal points. In a flat grid they would necessarily become scattered.
Such focalization has virtues that must be acknowledged and encouraged. (Life's virtues, by the way.)
In the dynamics of life, this implies a sort of three-dimensional, 24-hour freqeuncy pulse. Residents and people outside the Hyper Building are attracted to and released from those juxtaposed focuses on such 24-hour cycles.
An "automatic" consequence of this current-counter-current flux is the radial-circumferential geometry. This in turn defines the enveloping character of the exedrae, differing greatly from the "indifferent" character
of the orthogonal,flat grid.
The sun's presence and the garments the exedrae are apt to wear in response to the sun's trajectories and seasons strongly suggests that the mentioned radial, horizontal geometry also be found on the vertical. Consequently, the exedrae lean toward the vertical axis of the tower, thus also favoring the garments' display.
The garments are (green house) transparent or (parasol) opaque membranes according to the seasons. They are stretching from one exedrae to the other and they drape portions of the south side of the tower.
A series of concentric exedrae will define a third set of spaces between the indoors and the outdoors.
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This third kind of space via exedrae and transparent or opaque garments can modify and moderate the temperature, light, wind, and rain. Spring and fall equinox could be moments of ritual when the garments go from transparency to parasol and vice versa.
This change would also change the perception of the cityscape. Sensations, perceptions and and emotions would converge toward seasonal pageantries.
The self-contained,
three dimensional landscape of the city
marks a clear distinction between nature
and city, while putting nature at the "feet of the city" at
a walking distance for residents and guests.
The identity of the city, whatever the originality it might develop (complexity), would have a powerful signature in its physical structure.
Since democracy is and will remain for centuries to come more a dream then a reality, the Hyper Building will contain in its stratified focuses a stratification of social, cultural, economic, philosophical and ethno-racial groups.
To avoid violent conflicts will take a lot of knowledge, experience, planning, tolerance, and hard-to-come-by wisdom, not to mention large infusions of wealth.
A generous and positive attitude by the citizens toward this urban laboratory could produce an urban effect of an enviable and germinal kind.
The noble imprint of the city would be in its complex dynamism and its active tolerance.
The logistics of the city is on three parallel planes: people, freight and utilities. Transport to and from the city is a regional-continental mass transit (linear-motor). The main terminal is on the northeast side of the Hyper Building.
Plugged
into the network are also
three main "terras" with
their construction yards
at different levels of the
tower.
In
case of emergency, the
evacuation of the tower
is mainly activated by
the array of escalators
and slides leaving the
tower at the intermediate
levels to land at ground
level within a 500 meter
radius circumference, "draining" the
tower of its dwellers
in a matter of minutes.
The heliport on the roof
of the tower is also an
important evacuation facility.
The miniaturized and complex environment generated by the Hyper Building is a definer of frugality , the same frugality impossible in the scattered mode of suburban sprawl now embraced by the hyper-affluent societies. The hyper-production-consumption cycle demanded, mandated, by the suburban sprawl, besides clouding minds, is dotting the landscape with ever-larger mountains of waste and poluttants.
Frugality is the vessel for interiorization and life, the whole of it, is interiorization. Materialism is the nemesis of frugality
It might be suggestive of the Hyper Building's long-range intent to point out that an impending ice age would make the arcological mode of the Hyper Building into an imperative because extremes of cold and bleakness demand compactness and cooperation (complexity-miniaturization-duration). The same is true for space. The survival of the species would then be consigned to arcologies, of which the Hyper Building is one.
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