Atlas City Project

Somebody asked me back a while ago what i thought a modern skyscraper would look like. A few things come to mind. For one thing, up tall is neat but out wide is as important.

Anyhow, i drew this. Maybe we can get it in pov ray some day.

What are your ideas for modern towers?

Now I see what your 10 wing building would look like. This is an interesting design as well. This could actually combine the center (hospital/university) with the convention halls (wings). That would make this the main social hub and education/medical center all in one building. There would need to be enough internal separation to prevent problems (spreading of infection, high population interfering with medical staff, etc.). It may need a few alterations, but the general concept could work without taking too much space.

Looks great Prometheus, keep up the good work.

thanks josh!

Yes, this building is definitely the main hub of a down town city center.

Its got 12 wings because thats how the math worked out at those sizes.

It would be ideal as a college, a hospital, and a civics center all rolled into one. The wings allow for specialization and antiseptic isolation between
wings, and each wing really is a very large building in its own right the size of some schools or hospitals or court houses.

I almost started to add in a tower and wall line around it as you can see the one little tower down to the side, but then i figured that might clutter and the program was already starting to slow down.

Those wings are very highly detailed, the middle tower is much much less detail.

i like it, perhaps the center building should look something more like
image3.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/aria-las-vegas.jpg

albeit not quite so large

prometheuspan wrote:


Why wide instead of several tall in the same ground print? Just curious on your particular opinions, not saying wide is bad.

generally, building higher increases costs. the reason we have to worry about this is because the city would have a limited amount of funding, therefore we want to make buildings as efficient as possible, which doesn't always translate into tall.

Makes sense enough - but do people really have a full grasp of how much a city costs to build? I know of no city that has been built on a large scale from the get-go, cities develop over time - the cost would be in the hundreds of billion of dollars to do something like this, would it not??

This is a small scale city planned to have a population around 1000 to begin. This way it's enough people to prove the proof of concept without too many to make it too large to handle. Remember, this city will be a stepping stone so others can alter and increase the design for later cities.

We still can only estimate many prices right now. Hopefully, we will have a better idea when we have a more finalized buildings list and numbers.

1000 seems too small even for proof of concept, the cost per person for all the technology in the city will make it uneconomical, to make the city possible you may have to sell the right to live in the city to pay back the loans taken out to pay for its construction.

Arcosanti was intended to house 5000 people in 20-30 acres, although after 35 years it is still unfinished.

If you plan to buy 640 acres, you could reserve 100 acres for city buildings and the rest could be used for farming, aquaculture, industry and power generation.
Surplus produce from the farms could help pay the loans.

Hummmm...there are a few issues that we keep going back and forth with. With the current residential building design aimed at not being to small and uncomfortable, but also not too many stories and expensive we are limited on the number that can fit. If they are too close they shade each other and we lose out on the internal agriculture of the design.

We have discussed the possibility of selling space as well due to the expense to build and it will still be a great deal no matter how you look at it. Personally, I'd really prefer not to go this route if we can avoid it, but it's always up for debate.