Dubai
33°
Dubai Ziggurat : Pyramid + Completly Eco Friendly + Houses 100 Mil people April 12, 2009
Filed under Facts, General Dubai Information, Wonderful Dubai
The Burj Dubai is almost ready (well, they still have to put several hundred glass panes on it) and many more buildings are scheduled to be either finished or started in the remaining months of 2008. One of the latest projects that was presented to the wealthy Arabs is a pyramid-like building that is completely eco-friendly and can house no less than 1 million people.
Timelinks, a design firm based in Dubai, has come up with the design for the Ziggurat building which turns out to be a sort of self-sufficient enclave, featuring an efficient vertically-and-horizontally-running public transportation system plus all sorts of ecological energy generators.
DVice informs that Timelinks has already begun all the necessary steps towards patenting the design as well as the technology necessary to build it. The entire building is supposed to measure nearly a whole square mile, and should use a combination of steam, wind and solar-based methods in order to produce the necessary energy. “Green areas” inside the huge building could provide the small-scale city with agricultural space, so food won’t be an issue with this structure.
What an elitist venture! Green living is becoming a thing for the rich while the poor lose out as usual. Also, not a one off structure? I hope we won\’t see the return of Le Corbusier\’s Radiant City and the \’machine for living in\’ idea in the name of green architecture.All the eco-friendly technologies put into the Ziggurat and other buildings are set to bring more carbon-neutral areas in order to reduce the global warming effects.
The infrastructure still don’t look good.. I would like to see some green trasport methods, like maglev-trains out of that huge pice of a living-machine.
But atleast: They’re thinking about the environment and there is still people who lives in thighter spaces than that(so maybe this would have been a good idea for some countries) =)
Looks like that would have been too crowded for me, well.. I’m used to live in Norway though.
“Martijn Kramer, managing director of The International Institute for the Urban Environment told WAN: ‘As a general reaction the Ziggurat Project is viable from a technical point of view. However reflecting from a more sustainable holistic approach we do wonder if the food supply and waste system are taken care for, as the concept seems rather based upon carbon neutrality and energy saving.’ Kramer’s initial reaction to ‘Ziggurat’ also raises a very important issue: are people willing to live in a mega building of 2.3 sq km? Will the thought of living in a machine comfort people?”
Tags: 1 million, all sorts, arabs, burj dubai, enclave, energy generators, Facts, friendly technologies, General Dubai Information, glass panes, global warming effects, green architecture, infrastructure, le corbusier, maglev trains, necessary energy, necessary steps, pice, public transportation system, pyramid, radiant city, steam, Wonderful Dubai
Culture obviously plays into whether or not folks would be willing to live in something that is hyper-dense or not.
OTOH, something that doesn’t seem to be taken into account is, what happens when families change? A single guy only needs ‘x’ amount of space. Now when that single guy gets married*, has 4 kids, and a parent becomes decrepit/disabled and decide to move in…? Obviously there’s going to be a lot of change in how much space the guy can be comfortable living in, no matter what culture we’re talking about here.
Also, what happens when some fatal communicable disease starts making the rounds? shutting folks into their ‘homes’ will only work for so long before even the most gregarious human being starts to get cabin fever (for lack of a better term).
There’s also the chance that the local economy could contract as well - you can only fit so much stuff into one space, and it’s not like, say, Home Depot could do a whole lot besides sell wallpaper, paint, and light fixtures to the folks (just as example).
Some folks here will happily cry against the “McMansion!” and think they’re being the smartest guy in the room, but consider this: those things do get sold for a reason, especially as our society gets more and more ‘crowded’… Suburbs, as much as they’re derided, are actually a compromise between the comfort of wide-open spaces (and a buffer from ‘the world’), and the conveniences of living in a city.
From that point, it begins digging deeper into some fundamental human psychology - how does a human being deal with being more and more crowded in society?
* yes, we could pack the city with programmers and handily solve the marriage problem, but we’re talking people here…