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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the wonkavator dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

In the 160 or so years since the first skyscrapers were built, technological innovations of many kinds have allowed us to build them to reach astonishing heights. Today there is a 1,000-meter (167-story) building under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even taller buildings are possible with today's structural technology.

But people still don't really live in skyscrapers the way futurists had envisioned, for one reason: Elevators go only up and down. In the "Harry Potter" movies, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and others, we see cableless boxes that can travel not just vertically but horizontally and even diagonally. Today, that future might be closer than ever. A new system invented and being tested by German elevator producer ThyssenKrupp would get rid of cables altogether and build elevators more like magnetic levitation trains, which are common in Japan and China.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-reengineering-elevators-21st-century-cities.html


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday August 09 2017, @12:29PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 09 2017, @12:29PM (#551067)

    Pyramids are all volume, with very little surface for daylight access.

    Actually they're pretty good, its not like they're spheres. Also there's no reason the sides have to be smooth, a "wrinkly brain like surface" would expose a hell of a lot of surface area for daytime living.

    The interior would be handy for the vast amount of infrastructure where people don't look out windows. Big box stores don't need windows. Amazon warehouses don't need windows. Light (or heavy?) industry doesn't need windows. Water treatment plants (going both in, and out) don't need windows. Libraries, museums, and art galleries don't technically need windows and lack of UV would probably be a minor bonus. Movie theaters and other event-oriented sites don't need windows, if you're so bored at a concert that you're looking out the window then you went to the wrong concert. Also consider indoor gardening, if the interior footage is cheap enough people may not like visiting the warehouse vertical farm, but they'll enjoy the fresh food... Where there are no windows there will be solar panels so its quite reasonable to turn an excess of power into extremely fresh lettuce.

    Yes the bottom layer will have an inordinate amount of windowless support infrastructure but that's OK because the top layers will have approximately no support square footage available, it all kinda average out. Interesting to think about... the lower your apartment, the closer you are to services and nightlife and fun and work. The folks on top have a nice view but a long commute to the hospital or amazon food deliveries are late compared to the folks on the same level as the feature.

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  • (Score: 2) by Murdoc on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:00AM (1 child)

    by Murdoc (2518) on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:00AM (#551363) Homepage

    For the bottom floors don't forget factories, power generation, large-scale storage... basically all your industrial stuff. And a big structure like that is going to need lots of environmental equipment, such as air circulation, heating, cooling, plumbing, fire suppression, etc. Might as well put it all down there. Maybe a big train station to get to the other pyramids or wherever. Oh, and a supercomputer to control it all. :)

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:09PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:09PM (#551580)

      Yeah datacenters and UPS battery farms and hospitals and stuff like that.

      Also gotta be realistic, only maybe 5% of the population has a "thing" about requiring a window, most of the planet is pretty cool with their work cubicle or bedroom closet or shower stall not having an outdoor window. Along the lines of it would be nice to have the corner office even if the vast overwhelming majority of employees do not.

      Just being realistic, google claims the worlds largest shopping mall has just under 3 million square feet, approximately none of which has windows. The great pyramid in Egypt is only half a million square feet. So rather theoretically you could demolish the "Mall of America" in Minnesota and replace it with six great pyramids. Or more realistically we already have structures "way the hell bigger" than what people think of as a giant pyramid. Something a mere couple times the size of the Luxor hotel in Vegas would be quite large while appearing to be quite usable at a human scale (assuming you think the Luxor hotel in Vegas is humane, etc...)