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Swedish Firm Proposes City Buildings On Rails
Lanxon writes "A Swedish architecture firm that came up with a plan to roll buildings through a city on rails has won third prize in a competition to develop the Norwegian city of Åndalsnes. The company, Jagnafalt Milton, suggested that existing and new railroads could be built to provide the base for buildings that could be positioned differently depending on the seasons and on the weather. It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-berth cabins, along with a two-story suite, reports Wired."
This also means that cities could just move south when the winter comes. It's not like some roadblock is going to do much when a whole city rolls in.
Sounds like one of the reject ideas for Bioshock 3
not a bad idea. we've seen buildings have spring base. I can finally think about owning a house on a beach during summer and on mountain in winter.
Aw crap, now the extension cord won't reach!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I can't remember if it was Felix the cat or Betty Boop, but it sounds a lot like this. The buildings were all on rails and moved around as needed, and people got on a stationary "train" car while the buildings came to them in a strange inversion of normal travel methods
DHH's ego is getting REAL big! /jk
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Man, that would get confusing real fast!
Meet me at the restaurant on the corner of 5th and Main (except every other Tuesday where it's at 116th street and 22nd Ave).
Also we're switching to metric time so meet me at 75 minutes after 2.
Also, also, don't forget to put on concrete wheels for the rubber roads...
crazy dynamite monkey
I mean, those guys can do absolutely anything on rails, and I'll bet it only took a few lines of code.
I am officially gone from
They could be even more flexible if everyone lived in trailers. You wouldn't have to wait for all your neighbors to move when it was time to pull up stakes, nor would you be forced to move when your neighbors get wanderlust.
It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-berth cabins,
Make mine a double-wide.
What is old is new again.
More music, fewer hits
canrailsscale.com
I win!
The Army reading list
One proposed method of colonizing Mercury is to build a city on rails that circles the slowly-spinning planet, always staying in the shady site where temperatures are cool enough for human habitats.
With this story, such an idea doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It's fucking stupid. Sure they can change out buildings depending on what's needed for tourist season or during the winter, but what are they going to do with them when not in use? If they wanted a bunch of rail based accommodations, they could just lease some standard railway sleeper cars for the summer and then the railroads could use them somewhere else at other times of the year.
Film at 11.
Quoth TFA:
The idea, says the agency, was to use the city's railway infrastructure -- left behind from the days when it was an maritime construction town, building oil rigs -- as a basis for its future. Konrad Milton, one of the partners in the company, told Wired.co.uk: "As we see it there are two major benefits. First, it's easier to put buildings on existing train tracks than to demolish the tracks and build regular building foundations. Secondly the city of Åndalsnes has different needs depending on season." ...
Why rail and not roads? Milton says: "In this case the railtracks are in such abundance that it's the obvious choice, but the idea with rolling buildings could work very well in situations where roads and other hard surfaces are in abundance -- like old military airfields, harbors or over sized highways."
Interesting recycling of old infrastructure. Reminds me of how Manchester England recycled a lot of its old inner city industrial warehouses and converted them to loft apartments. The population of the city centre boomed and and the already legendary nightlife of the city was given another boost as the place was gentrified. (Pity about the Hacienda nightclub though, it ended up becoming loft apartments too.) A lot of their old railways were recycled as tram lines. Trams running on the old railway tracks run at 50MPH which may not sound like much, but for travel in a built-up urban area it beats the hell out of anything you could do by road. The tram system (called Metrolink) combines that speed in the suburbs with the convenience of dropping you off literally at the doorstep of the shops and offices in the city centre. It's so popular that overcorwding was its biggest problem last time I was there.
I'm not sure if Åndalsnes could re-use their old railway lines in that way but this mobile building thing is pretty innovative and exciting. Kudos!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I guess if you have a lot of unused railroads, you can move a bunch of buildings a few miles from the coast when a big squall is coming, and back to the coast when the weather clears. Throws some solar panels and wind turbines on each "house" to run a few appliances. Have a refuse and sewer collection building. And have some shower buildings with rain collectors.
I'm assuming this is all for "after" the big apocalypse.
As somebody who keeps up with this kind of stuff (albeit often with a rather quizzical expression), you should just nod, smile, say "that's cool," and move on. Don't think about how monstrously impractical this would be. Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts, the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service, or the insulation requirements of a floor raised up off the ground in a northern climate. Don't try to think about how much simpler it would be to achieve the same goals in a passive design. Don't think about any of these things, because if you do your brain will break from the glaring obviousness of the problems. Just take a moment to appreciate the zoomy science-fiction cool factor, and get on with your day.
..to self aware cities that decide we are not worthy to live in them
just read Greg Bear's "Strength of Stones".. not his best but not too bad.
-Lod
A new book, due out from Swedish Press. 80 Kr.
When they're going down the track, they can say "We built this city on rock and roll!"
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
This seems like a gimmick, but I have a fantasy that might actually be feasible - not for me, but for truly rich people. The idea would be to convert old railroad cars into luxury traveling apartments. There is plenty of room in one of those things for very comfortable living if the interior is designed ergonomically. The way I picture it, cities could "beautify" some of their defunct freight stations into rail car parks - parking lots for luxury rail apartments.
Occupants could then negotiate transport of their apartment by attaching it to various freight trains at competitive prices. Moving freight by rail is pretty cheap, so this sort of "migration" might actually be pretty affordable once you've bought/rented one of these rolling apartments. I picture this working especially well on a continent like Europe, where there is lots of rail and lots to see. Next year, the rail tunnel under the Bosphorus will mean that you can take a rail car from Scotland to the Middle East on standard gauge rail. If China comes through on its plan to build a railroad across Asia into Turkey, that would extend the mobility of these apartments even farther.
Of course, you could argue that shipping container apartments might be more practical and less constrained geographically, but that's just much less romantic.
As someone who has spent a lot of time commuting on trains in central Europe, I would welcome this. If my office drove up to pick me up at the door. But if the train is only serving Lutefisk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk , I'll pass. Now if I could only remember the name of the fish that they put into the cans, where the fermentation turns the cans into a hand grenade form . . .
If the train went to Bullerbyn, that would be fantastic. I could invite Skrollan for a drink. Skrollan is the coolest Swedish name for a chick.
The Norwegians are also top runners with their sheep head stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalahove
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It sounds familiar....
Trains have them, sleeper cars. There's even double story trains, so i don't see why there wouldn't be double story sleeper cars.
seriously stupid fucking idea, unless sweden has really crappy ground to build foundations on. but then, putting all the weight on a couple of points is probably better, i'm sure.
Be seeing you...
Brings a whole new meaning to "Home Theft".
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Well said, sir. As a practicing structural engineer, I see all sorts of very impractical designs coming from architects offices. It is somewhat amazing how elaborate artists can be when attempting to solve a problem. There's usualy some fantastically complicated, but elegant looking, solution which seems exceptionally cool, until you realize that for each problem solved, several more can be created.
I don't know to whom this is attributed, but it certainly applies to many of these types of ideas: Creativity is the ability to allow yourself to make mistakes; Art (or in this case, Architecture) is knowing which ones to keep.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Just think how much easier white flight would have been with movable buildings!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's the Crimson Assurance!!
The Rails framework may be nice to develop on but deployment sucks compared to PHP.
They should stick with Zend Framework.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
They hopped about in their personalized Pullman car: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_car
That looked like cool living ...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Just out of curiosity, is Sweden one of those countries where use of psychoactive drugs legal?
The cities probably won't fall out of the sky dead.
"Lame" - Galaxar
They look like cereal boxes on wheels.... what's the top speed on these things? Can't wait for the first house crash headline.
So, this will eventually create a class of citizen who doesn't get sun exposures because the rich will get the buildings that move to face the sun.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Simpsons did it!
Considering how frequently the average person changes jobs, the ability to move your house to a place near the location of one's current job has an appeal. One would not have to endure long commutes every day to and from one's fixed house. Houses could be manufactured in a factory to tight specifications (low insulation costs), with much less labor. Some believed that housing bubbles in several states were due to restrictions on house construction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet) shows the equatorial rotation velocity as 10.892 km/h. So the train would need to travel that fast to keep out of the Sun. That number is reduced by the cosine of the latitude so at 85 north, it would be just under 1 km/h. Of course teperature cycling would be enormous. Wikipedia gives the range as [100K 700K] at the equator and [80K 380K] at 85 latitude. What material can withstand that heat expansion and remain true? I wonder if a space station in mercury's L4 Lagrange point would be feasable? Is Mercury's L4 still withini Mercury's umbra?
I'm sorry but I can't imagine this working.. As we all know buildings require a firm foundation. In order to have a rail system that could potentially hold the weight of the building at any given point the entire rail system would have to be build upon a foundation strong enough to hold the heaviest of buildings.. The costs would be astronomical; and for what? Miles of empty track?
And you thought it was bad when people went "camping" with those huge campers.
Now, when you "get away from it all", you can really "take it all with you".
Honey, did you turn off the stove before you left? Hold on a second, let me check.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The all-contingency plan B: move the entire city 5 miles down the road!
Sure, that'd be cost effective. All you'd have to do is build a planet-wide rail network from 70 million miles away. Then keep the part of the tracks exposed to the sun for months at a time from melting. No problem.
Here's a thought: if you want to colonize some other planet, why not pick one that stays cooler than, say, molten lead?
Sounds like the first step in the Hungry City chronicle series of science fiction. Cities consume towns as the trundle across the post nuclear landscape. And it's a kids book! (by Reeve)
... had luxuries like air, water, and at least some food available for free on-site. Even much more hospitable places than Mercury had to be forcibly colonized (Australia, anyone?). I think the GP is pretty much right on target.
Pick up lines could be odd.
"So, are you from around here... currently?"
Problems :
Using rail does not remove the problems you would have with the obvious alternate way : trailers. You basically have all of the disadvantages of using mobile trailers stacked with ADDITIONAL problems from width limits on a rail line. I'm not even going to go into the problems associated with mobile homes/trailers, other than to say that every single one I have ever been in sucked.
And another additional problem : you can tow mobile homes and trailers over gravel and dirt roads that are dirt cheap to build and maintain (pun intended)
Rail is VERY expensive : about $1 million/mile. Totally economically unfeasible to build the additional rail segments this plan would need to work, as well as to bring the old abandoned track up to code that this architect has in mind to use.
Why not have a small vacation cabin sitting on rails, that can be hauled around according to season? Or an additional post office that follows the seasonal demand created by tourists. Or a police station..
The technique exists for moving things as well as for flexible hookups:
In the Netherlands they have house boats docked to facility hookups and a sidewalk next to it, complete with a flower pot and a mailbox.
In the US, they apparently build up to 2 level houses which can be taken apart in the middle, put on the highway at night only to be reassembled somewhere else. I even heard, that some people -who obviously can afford such luxury- live in houses called "trailers" that have wheels permanently attached to the underside of the house!
Neat, an Ikea town!
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
you should just nod, smile, say "that's cool," and move on.
Which, in a nutshell, is why this is such a backward country with appallingly boring architecture.
Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts
This is already a solved problem. See railroads for more info.
the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service
Also a solved problem: standard connectors, valves, and switches.
or the insulation requirements of a floor raised up off the ground in a northern climate
Every floor except the first in a multistory structure is raised off the ground. So now you have to insulate one more floor. Big deal.
Don't try to think about how much simpler it would be to achieve the same goals in a passive design.
Now there you have a valid point. That said, having mobile buildings makes it much easier to solve another problem with conventional cities: they're damn hard to rearrange in response to changing conditions. Rolling buildings along a dedicated track system is probably less expensive and definitely less time-consuming than remodeling or demolishing and rebuilding. Good buildings not have to languish when the area they're stuck in goes into decline.
For me, the red flag in this scheme is seismic stability. Even if the structural integrity of the building can be assured -- as far as that can be done with any building in an earthquake -- what's the plan for getting a building back on the tracks if it's shaken off or worse, if the tracks are bent or broken?
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
...would get the job done with tough structures that would be cheap, versatile, transportable, and settable by crane on permanent foundations.
That said, the reason container housing hasn't taken off is the form-factor of containers which is dictated by the form-factor of what transports them.
The idea of moving living quarters about urban areas basically for shits and grins is fucking stupid, there is no nice way to put it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This is in every way shape and form, a suggestion of making trailer parks. The article even says that roads could be used instead of rail in places that have roads. There is nothing new or inovative about this. Heck, they don't even have good trailers. What they show in the article are closer to those crappy trailers they pull in for temporary office space. These guys shouldn't get an award. They should get laughed at.
I'll wait for the Swedish video thankyouverymuch.
Amazing fact: All Swedish movies end with the single word SLUT. They do. Really.
I worked as an architect / builder in Japan.
The irony of this idea is funny to me.
In japan the rail companies buy huge areas of land, and then put in the railroad.
Then they build huge houses development and town centers there.
Its a double wammy.
True story from my local area - here on the seaside the environmental laws prohibit any permanent buildings some distance from the sea, in order to protect the dunes from erosion or something like that; so pretty much nothing larger than an outhouse can be built legally. So, one guy installed a single section of rails (30-40 metres? something like that) and built a summer cottage on top of a series of railroad chassis to get around the restrictions - it's legally classified as a vehicle, not as real estate.
Quite reasonable houses can be built this way, as rails can support an order of magnitude more weight than trailer wheels.
The idea to mount a house on rails is not new. In Italy there is a beautiful example of luxury home built in 1935 and still working. Try google with the following keywords: villa girasole marcellise.
And his proposal had wit and intelligence. More impportantly it was lacking the misplaced SAANA references.
Search for "Potteries Thinkbelt Cederic Price" also separately search any of the above terms you are not familiar with.
Welcome to Åndalsnes 3
Sorry boss, I couldn't find the office this morning.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Thus begins the never-ending quest to reach optimum. While you all stay inside with the guilds, I'll be up future getting old.
Just have the rails going down so the buildings are protected by the Geofront! lol
Came here to make this reference :)
Blar.
...is part of our town's 10 year plan to have a huge disaster.
As defined by Patrick McManus:
So, basically they've rediscovered Skagway Alaska. During the gold rush era, they'd periodically reposition stores along the main road. A horse team would pull the old building away, and then pull the new building into place
Looking at today's headlines, this concept would work well in capital cities as new regimes come and go.
In university towns, your apartment could roll in for however many semesters you were there. If it was small enough, you could attend class from your apartment.
Your city could self-configure itself overnight based on social network "friend" settings.
The home of the future is a freight container cube.
Look here, son. If they can produce:
1. A boob-a-licious ski team that defines what is blonde
2. Abba
3. Ace of Base
then surely they can put a city on rail. Surely they can. I can dream of skiing with blonde boobs. Go Frida - I know there's something's going on! Malin, you're not as weird as you think! Take Cmdr. Taco. He IS weird.
The golden age of the private railroad car was, obviously, the bright noontide of the nabobs who took pleasure in such ornate and often beautiful conveniences and could afford to possess and maintain them. The privately owned Pullman was, from the mid-Eighteen Seventies until the stock market crash of 1929, an accepted and conventional symbol of wealth. Only a few survive today.
In the East they were cherished and maintained in gleaming splendor by entire generations and dynasties of Goulds, Harrimans, Vanderbilts, Fricks, and Wideners and rolled elegantly horn Palm Beach to the Adirondacks, to Bar Harbor and Louisville, as the season and occasion dictated. They clustered familiarly as late as the mid-Twenties in swarms of twenty or thirty at a time on the private car track of the now vanished Royal Poinciana Hotel at Palm Beach, and at Derby time the Louisville & Nashville's yards at Louisville saw their arrival at the end of every inbound varnish train for days at a time.
In the Old West they were the affluential hallmark of the presence of silver kings from the Comstock, copper monarchs from Butte, the old bearded Silver Senators of Nevada and Montana, cattle magnates and all the departed generation of Emperors of Get and Satraps of Power. Success on the prairies and in the tall timber rode the private palace cars in frock coats and passed out dollar cigars to the reporters on arriving in San Francisco, Virginia City, or Fort Worth. It drank vintage champagne in jeroboams and delighted in gold-plated plumbing fixtures and brass-bound observation platforms rolling through the high passes of the Sierra or through the sagebrush night.
There was almost no limit to the ingenuity of owners and decorators of private cars during their flowering. Rare inlaid woods were frequently imported for bulkheads, and solid mahogany trim and panels were commonplace. For her "Japauldin," Mrs. J. P. Donahue, perhaps the richest woman in the world, commanded quartered oak beams running the length of the drawing room ceiling, brocaded draperies at better than $100 a yard, solid gold lighting fixtures and plumbing appliances, and a wood-burning fireplace activated by an electric blower.
Paderewski was another musician who owned a private car and his "General Stanley" was known to railroad men all over the continent. Often in the yards of Cleveland or Fort Worth, switch tenders and brakemen would gather around it as the maestro practiced at night. "Just as good as a five-dollar seat at the concert," they said. VARNISH FOR THE NABOBS
You just click your Ruby slippers three times to get there.
def canhaz_slippers
headers["Status"] = "301 There's no place like home"
redirect_to "http://www.home.se/"
end
Toot Toot!
In his novel Saturn's Children. The city in Mercury is built on top of rails so that it can always be on the dark side of the planet.