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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:
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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