hillsidedigger wrote:I think people would not do well living like bees in a hive.
hillsidedigger wrote:I think people would not do well living like bees in a hive.
kiwichick wrote:what a load of crap!!!!!!!
"Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist"
Kenneth Boulding Economist
kiwichick wrote:@ sub
there is no god
pstarr wrote:Sub, ideally the Archology has concentrated the population in large dense building enclaves rather than dispersed suburban sprawls. Thus, the country, farm land, forest, paradise is situated right next door . . . outside the front door, just outside the Archology. That way everybody who lives like bees in a hive is able to treat the domicile, their little sleeping/private space, as merely a sleeping/cooking cocoon, rather than a desperate personal kingdom. The World becomes the Kingdom.
But truth is nobody wants this. They are stuck in the reigning paradigm. Why do you bring it up? It is too late to retool this sorry ass country. You are only hitting your head on the sheetrock wall.
Subjectivist wrote:kiwichick wrote:what a load of crap!!!!!!!
"Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist"
Kenneth Boulding Economist
Trying to redesign cities to be maximully resource efficient is a load of crud? You have very strange ideas about proper stewardship of God's green Earth.
Huge cuboid skyscraper "big enough to hold 20 Empire State Buildings"
Saudi Arabia is experiencing an unprecedented construction boom at the moment. Alongside its previously announced 170-km-long skyscraper and Qiddiya gigaproject, comes another incredibly ambitious project named the Mukaab. It will comprise a huge cuboid supertall skyscraper that hosts a twisting tower inside.
The Mukaab will reach a height of 400 m (1,312 ft), which puts it at around 41 in the world's tallest rankings. However, it will also be just as long and wide, which makes it truly massive. Its decorative exterior is inspired by traditional Islamic architecture and it will be topped by a rooftop garden.
Its cavernous interior will have a floorspace of around 2 square kilometers (0.77 square miles), which the Saudi Government's Public Investment Fund says would be theoretically large enough to hold 20 Empire State Buildings. Beyond its sheer size though, the most interesting thing about its interior is the large twisting tower that will be positioned at its center – think of it like a big box with a tower inside, essentially.
"[The Mukaab] will encompass a tower atop a spiral base which will be a premium hospitality destination with a multitude of retail, cultural and tourist attractions, along with residential and hotel units, commercial spaces, and recreational facilities," explained the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
Elsewhere inside, the Mukaab will also feature some kind of holographic experience that will reportedly be used to depict underwater and strange otherworldly scenes. It's all very ambitious and futuristic.
The Mukaab will be the centerpiece of a larger development in Riyadh called New Murabba that will involve the construction of thousands of new homes, hotels, and retail spaces, as well as offices and leisure facilities, an immersive theater, and a technology and design university.
The project is being handled by the New Murabba Development Company, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman heading it. It's expected to be completed by 2030. The video below offers some more details on its design.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
One of the few things you said that I agree with. This seems to me like a Dubai style white elephant.theluckycountry wrote:Like a big Mecca. Well I hope they have more luck that Dubai did with it's "World" islands mega project.
WHAT HAPPENED TO DUBAI MAN-MADE ISLANDS?It is twenty years since the construction of the man-made islands of Dubai began, the world's largest artificial archipelago. Widely announced as the star project of the urban development of the United Emirate, two decades later, the story is very different to what the developers would have imagined. Islands yet to be completed, abandoned projects, the sea reclaiming its space. In twenty years, numerous different problems have led to delays in the works, nonpayment, debts, legal problems, an irreparable environmental impact, some islands sinking back into the sea.
First problem: oil and financial crisis
The financial and real estate crisis of 2008 and the drop in oil prices in 2014 which fuel the Emirate's economy were the first events to have a negative impact on the feasibility of this macro-project.
The chronology of the events is long and complex, but essentially it can be summarized in private investors that pulled out, million dollar debts incurred by the developer, lawsuits and suspended works, with no restart date.
The problems continue today. In 2018, sales of new real estate developments dropped by 46% during the first quarter of the year. Since the end of 2014, house prices have dropped by 15%.
The World: at risk of sinking
Still with The World, in 2010, the marine company Penguin Marine warned that this group of archipelagos was sinking back into the sea. The company, responsible for providing logistics and transport services to the islands, regularly took measurements for safety purposes.
The main reason is that the sand extracted from the seabed to build the 300 archipelagos, was gradually returning to its place of origin. A photograph taken from the International Space Station in February 2010, showed evidence that, indeed, the waters of the Persian Gulf were rising and the islands were starting to disappear. This also led to the channels between the islands becoming obstructed.
WHO LIVES ON THE ISLANDS?
Despite the extraordinary publicity received by such bold projects, other than Pal Jumeirah the man-made islands of Dubai are sparsely inhabited. While some of them are privately owned, its current situation can be easily checked without having to delve deep into Dubai's cadastral records. A quick look from space through tools such as Google Maps is enough to verify that, despite the enormous effort involved, the islands remain largely undeveloped.
The World’s Tallest Building Should Never Have Been BuiltThe Burj Khalifa contributes nothing to Dubai except bragging rights. While the surrounding hotels, malls, and other attractions generate a great deal of income for the local economy, the colossal Burj Khalifa was financed by a massive amount of debt and it is still unknown whether it will ever pay for itself. The situation becomes grimmer when one considers its maintenance costs, especially with its famously inefficient sewage system. And the main reason the building is so expensive is its height, which is a completely cosmetic, non-functional feature of the building.
The city of Dubai did not green light a building that extends a half-mile into the air because of a pressing need for residences in downtown Dubai. To the contrary, the top 800 feet (244 meters) of the building, or 29% of the structure’s total height, is devoted to non-usable floors. These floors are not simply unoccupied due to lack of demand; even worse, they were not designed to be occupied in the first place. They were simply added to edge out the competition for the prize of world’s tallest building.
Pointless height is not an issue specific to the Burj Khalifa. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitation estimates that 60 percent of all supertall buildings — defined as buildings that are over 300 meters, or 984 feet, in height — would not be supertalls without useless floors and spires added to the top. The council calls this wasteful space “vanity” height.
The world needs functional architecture that meets the needs of the local population. It does not need more monuments to the power of capital, even pretty ones like the Burj Khalifa or the Jeddah Tower, which is currently under construction in Saudi Arabia and is expected to become the first building in the world to exceed 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) in height, a distinction that serves nothing except the egos of those who are commissioning the building.
Plantagenet wrote:Powerful and Wealthy Nations and Empires tend to build huge buildings. These buildings can become great historical monuments that live on long after the people who built the monuments are dead and gone and the entire ancient nation that built them has vanished.
For instance, the Egyptians built the pyramids.....the Athenian Greeks built the Acropolis ....the Romans built the Coliseum....the Byzantines built the Hagia Sophia.........the Chinese built the Great Wall......the Moslems in India built the taj Mahal.......the Brits built St. Pauls.....and the Americans built New York City.
Now the Arab countries are wealthy and they are building great monuments too.
Personally, I wish them success with their huge engineering projects. I've seen the Burj and it's pretty amazing.
AND I'm looking forward to see the new Saudi super building if/when they get it done. It sounds like it will be like nothing else on earth.
Cheers!
_______Ozymandias______
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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