Earthscraper Takes Sustainable Design Underground

Hugh Pickens writes"The 'Earthscraper,' a 65-story, 82,000-square-foot inverted pyramid beneath Mexico City takes a new approach to escalating megacity problems like population growth, urban sprawl, preserving open space, and conserving energy and water, promising to turn the modern high-rise, quite literally, on its head. The proposed building will be located at the Zocalo, Mexico City's major public plaza one of the few sizable open spaces left in the city of 9 million. 'It's a massive empty plot, which makes it the ideal site for our program,' says architect Esteban Suarez. The Earthscraper concept begins with a glass roof replacing the opaque stone surface of the Zocalo preserving the open space and civic uses of the Zocalo, while allowing natural lighting to flow downward into all floors of the tapering structure through clear or translucent core walls. The first 10 stories would hold a museum dedicated to the city's history and its artifacts. 'We'd almost certainly find plenty of interesting relics during the dig — dating right back to the Aztecs who built their own pyramids here,' says Suarez adding that the design incorporates a system of gardens occurring roughly every 10 stories, to help generate fresh air. One thing working in Earthscraper's favor is there are strict laws that prevent building upwards in this part of Mexico City, but no laws for building down. 'They will have to develop new laws to stop this from happening,' says Chief Design Officer Emilio Barja. 'I hope they don't [find the] time to do that.'"

Comments

Question:

[markbark]

While inverted pyramids are an interesting design, what're you gonna do with the million cubic feet of dirt from the hole you have to dig to build the damn thing?

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, you use it to build an inverted-inverted pyramid outside the city somewhere.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

You could for example dump it in the ocean to create more land.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Build upwards, of course!

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

While inverted pyramids are an interesting design, what're you gonna do with the million cubic feet of dirt from the hole you have to dig to build the damn thing?

Lake Texcoco might have some effect on that.

Re:Question:

[TheLink]

I'm no civil engineer but AFAIK it usually is a lot more expensive to build down than to build up.

Try digging a 1 cubic metre hole in the ground. Now try to build a 1 cubic metre structure above the ground. Which is easier?

If it were cheaper, they'd do it more often - there are advantages - thermal insulation etc (and even then it's easier to build something low and pile earth over it, than dig).

Re:Question:

[Smallpond]

World's tallest building: 830 m
World's deepest mine: 3900 m

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously it's more expensive and difficult to build down than up, but if you haven't noticed, there is a finite amount of land to build up on. In major urban centers, there's little to no land left, so we wind up with increasing urban sprawl, which has it's own pile of issues. That being said, out of all the problems of building underground rather than above, getting rid of the dirt you dug up is definitely the least of them.

Re:Question:

[Hogwash McFly]

Dig another hole to put the dirt in.

Re:Question:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is cheaper to build the first few stories up than down. But at some point, the cost of holding up more and more floors, structural integrity issues, wind issues, etc come into play. May be even visibility to terrorists for insurance purposes. Building down, the only cost is earth removal and dumping it somewhere. But the earth starts getting hotter, and ventilation, fire escape etc get complicated.

Re:Question:

[0123456]

Obviously it's more expensive and difficult to build down than up, but if you haven't noticed, there is a finite amount of land to build up on.

Whereas there's an infinite amount of land to build down on?

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Build artificial islands of course! Dubai is ahead of the times as always.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

even more important: how much are you going to spend for removing the sewage from the bottom floors?

Re:Question:

[erroneus]

I was kinda thinking "giant swimming pool." How far above sea level is that area?

Either way, this is just another pyramid scheme isn't it?

Re:Question:

[djsmiley]

And its not like a terrorists could cave in an underground structure or anything >_

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you considered running for office?

Re:Question:

[slyrat]

It is cheaper to build the first few stories up than down. But at some point, the cost of holding up more and more floors, structural integrity issues, wind issues, etc come into play. May be even visibility to terrorists for insurance purposes. Building down, the only cost is earth removal and dumping it somewhere. But the earth starts getting hotter, and ventilation, fire escape etc get complicated.

In the article it also talked about the problems with how wet the soil is in this area. So they would need to find a way to get the water (plumbing/pumping/etc) issues worked out. It also mentioned that this design would work better in a more arid environment because of the these issues.

Re:Question:

[Medievalist]

Building down, the only cost is earth removal and dumping it somewhere.

You're forgetting the water table.

In a sufficiently large, arcology-type underground community, the water's useful and valuable. But you'll probably have to keep pumps running all the time if you don't want to drown or be smothered in mold and algae. Mines that don't pump, flood.

Re:Question:

[nschubach]

What's the number of livable spaces for each of those?

Re:Question:

[Mitchell314]

When you have large, dense populations and the need to put them somewhere, that's kind of an inherent problem no matter what you do.

Re:Question:

[DrXym]

I expect the biggest risk to building down, especially in Mexico city is earthquakes. I'm not sure it helps a building or occupant's survivability to be underground and surrounded by soil which would liquify and do its utmost to squash the build like a bug if / when Mexico gets its next magnitude 8 quake. At least when the building goes upwards the foundation is likely to be solid concrete and the entire building resting on enormous shock absorbers.

Re:Question:

[nschubach]

Why remove it? Treat it on the bottom floors and pump the clean water back to the top.

Re:Question:

[Daniel_Staal]

No, but there is more immediately available, as it's a design technique that has been less utilized.

Re:Question:

[poity]

There's probably a big difference between "building livable spaces" and "digging mine shafts". Drainage and moisture control will be a huge challenge. And you'll need active ventilation (can't just open a window and let the wind do it), the cost of which would offset your heating/cooling savings.

Re:Question:

[Sique]

Mexico City is an artificial island (in the Lake Texcoco).

Re:Question:

[Brigadier]

add:

Massive retaining wall costs.
Massive sump pump design and maintenance costs.
Massive heat dissipation costs.
Massive CO2 dissipation costs.
Massive moisture intrusion and mitigation.

Also how do you address

upthrust from ground water
ventilation on that scale is ridiculous
100 year flood planning ( you think the titanic scene was bad)

Re:Question:

[Sique]

Enough. About 6500 ft.

Re:Question:

[rtb61]

The earth moves. Go down and you have to support the sides of the excavated pit. Water pressure also builds the deeper you go. Here is a conundrum for you. Build a series of say 4 story building, fill the gap between the buildings with compacted fill, are those buildings no above or below ground level.

Want to save space the put your buildings over roads. Roads chew up a ton of space, local roads, major roads, inter-county roads and interstate roads.

So build major thoroughfares and in public transport say rail, build up the next level to provide local roads and local public transport. The add retail with foot traffic, then commercial on top of that and finally residential. So no major arterial roads, also become major linear multi-use buildings and the space between becomes parks and gardens. So a major road linking two major cities could accommodate millions without using any additional land area and put all those people housed in immediate proximity to public transport.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO that's the biggest problem with this scheme.

The only two ways to deal with water when building underground are letting gravity take it somewhere else, and actively pumping it out. The former is vastly preferable to the latter, since it doesn't require power (which tends to go out at the same time you have water intrusion), and since you don't have the hydrostatic pressure of water against your structure.

Re:Question:

[Smidge204]

Article says they plan on installing gardens every 10 floors to help keep the air fresher. Otherwise ventilation shouldn't be all THAT bad in terms of energy: You can probably get a good natural convection system going to handle most of the circulation instead of relying on mechanical fans, and the cool/warm air flows could double as part of the HVAC system itself.

Keeping the water out is certainly a bigger problem, though...

Also, oblig:

Here's an interesting fact: you're not breathing real air. It's too expensive to pump this far down. We just take carbon dioxide out of a room, freshen it up a little, and pump it back in. So you'll be breathing the same room full of air for the rest of your life. I thought that was interesting.

=Smidge=

Re:Question:

[delinear]

Not to mention mine shafts frequently collapse. Small movements in the earth which Skyscrapers deal with by building up and allowing for some sway are a much bigger deal underground. Build in too much room for movement and you start to lose the benefits of being underground. I'm also not sure about the green credentials - I'm guessing you'd need to pump air down there, you'd probably need a lot more lighting (especially for the outer rooms), and I'm guessing A/C (it's going to get warm down there). With glass over the top, there's a risk of frying people, if it's tinted then you lose a lot of the light benefits. And I hope they've accounted for anyone not being able to accidentally drop a truck down the shaft (how strong is the glass roof?) - I see the concept is pretty open sided, it would be easy to back over it.

Re:Question:

[multimediavt]

It is cheaper to build the first few stories up than down. But at some point, the cost of holding up more and more floors, structural integrity issues, wind issues, etc come into play. May be even visibility to terrorists for insurance purposes. Building down, the only cost is earth removal and dumping it somewhere. But the earth starts getting hotter, and ventilation, fire escape etc get complicated.

Complicated is an understatement. Untenable is a better word for it, given modern technologies. As a person who holds a Bachelor's of Architecture and a good grasp of geology and civil engineering, there are far fewer problems bulding up than down, and getting rid of the "dirt" is, honestly, the least of your worries. The major obstacles are:

• Rock, ground water and other topology/geology - got news for you, there's more than just dirt that has to be accounted for. I cannot tell you how many building projects I have seen go horribly wrong due to improper or incomplete geological surveys of building sites. They start drilling holes for concrete piles and all of a sudden, WHOOP, there's a Carst formation!
• Ventilation - a garden every 10 stories is NOT going to generate enough fresh air; unless we're talking about a garden that is the size of New York's Central Park every 10 stories.
• Seismic events - This is big one #1 - hard enough to deal with when the building falling down is a problem, bigger problem when you have to deal with being buried alive several hundred feet below the surface; do you remember how long it took to get the Chilean miners out? Imagine having to get out hundreds of people? All kinds of other issues with seismic events underground.
• Flood - Big one #2 - whether the source of water is a tsunami or just general flooding due to rain, designing and engineering around this problem is going to be the deal breaker. You can't just put a giant drain in the bottom. The water has to go somewhere.

No, I have been postulating that in order for mankind to survive we will need to move off the surface of the planet so it can be used almost exclusively to grow food as our population increases to beyond what we can currently sustain. The problem is the challenges of building underground are horrendous to overcome in a "green" or "sustainable" way. The technology to do it affordably just does not exist and may not for MANY centuries to come. No, folks, there was a reason we moved out of caves and started building things above ground.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

That has to be the wrongest right answer yet!
kudos!

Re:Question:

[avronius]

If you are planning on building *in* a city, you will disrupt whatever space you choose to develop - up *or* down. If a lot is vacant, would it not be available for building in either direction? There are certain areas where a large amount of *up* is not an option (proximity to airport or public monuments, etc.), and those where *down* will be cost prohibitive (flood plains, bedrock, etc.). But, if you can use your available space in without resulting in public eyesore, why would someone care if it's above ground or below?

Re:Question:

[aenigmainc]

build a new island off the coast? why should the Saudis have all the fun doing that.

Re:Question:

[tixxit]

The parent was modded funny, but this is quite common.

Re:Question:

[0100010001010011]

Value of Minerals 3900 m in the ground?
Value of Minerals 830 m in the air?

Re:Question:

[jellomizer]

That is where the IT Department goes.

Re:Question:

[amorsen]

No, I have been postulating that in order for mankind to survive we will need to move off the surface of the planet so it can be used almost exclusively to grow food as our population increases to beyond what we can currently sustain.

Wouldn't it be significantly easier to move the food production off the surface of the planet? Although easier still, just do food production in multiple stories. For much of the Earth, the current limit to food production isn't light but water, and if you have the energy to move a significant proportion of the population off-planet, you surely have enough energy for desalination.

Re:Question:

[Runaway1956]

That is EXACTLY what was on my mind. TFS refers to the history of Mexico City. Well - Tenochtitlan was started out by some drugged up dude who was lost in the swamps. Something about a vulture and a snake telling him that this was the land of the gods or some such nonsense. So - there are buildings in Mexico City that are sinking into that swamp, already. And, now, they want to dig DOWN, into that vast swampy lake, and build an underground city.

Maybe I'll research the people who are in line for contracts. An investment in water pumps sounds like a good idea.*

*This is where some clown suggests that the outer walls are going to be waterproof. I point to the Hoover Dam, in which channels were engineered for the water that flows THROUGH the concrete to be bled off. No one, nowhere, is going to build a structure this large, that is waterproof. Hell, seagoing ships aren't even waterproof! They all leak.

Re:Question:

[Runaway1956]

Maybe do it like the Arabs did it? They had effective air conditioning LONG before electricity was common. What do you think those minarets are for, anyway? They aren't just something to look at!

Re:Question:

[Grishnakh]

Obviously it's more expensive and difficult to build down than up, but if you haven't noticed, there is a finite amount of land to build up on. In major urban centers, there's little to no land left, so we wind up with increasing urban sprawl

This isn't that much of a problem: you can always knock down some crappy old buildings and build larger skyscrapers to get more floor space. Most American cities have tons and tons of land where they could do this. NYC is an exception: most of the space in lower/mid Manhattan really is used by taller buildings, but go to any other American city and you won't see very many tall buildings at all. It'd be easy to demolish a bunch of crappy older buildings in these places and replace them with new, larger buildings. They just don't do it very often because it's a lot cheaper to sprawl.

Re:Question:

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. This is why we need to ban all buildings over two stories, and demolish any that we have, so that we can be safe from terrorists. We should also demolish all our hydroelectric dams because terrorists could blow them up. Heck, we should just go back to horses and buggies and abandon electricity because terrorists could use our modern tools against us.

Re:Question:

[tom17]

Wow, it was just this morning that some passive/aggressive type told me that very same quote for the first time. I'm enjoying it :)

Re:Question:

[Grishnakh]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how would a multi-story farm work? You need sunlight to grow crops. Obviously, water can be pumped in, but sunlight would be a bit of a problem in a multistory building as only the top level would be lit; the others might be able to get some light in from the sides, but that's a small fraction of what the top gets, and probably not enough for crop growing. You could use artificial lighting, but now you're talking about setting up a power plant next to the ag building just to make enough light. To be energy efficient/carbon neutral, you could use solar power, but then you'd need more square footage for your solar arrays than if you just planted the crops outside without a building at all.

Re:Question:

[ColdWetDog]

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of Mexico.

There, I fixed it for you.

Re:Question:

[TheLink]

Uh, mines are not suitable places for "normal" people to work/stay in.

Assuming you're talking about the TauTona Mine, from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TauTona_Mine

employs some 5,600 miners. The mine is a dangerous place to work and an average of five miners die in accidents each year.

So have 35000 nonminer people (typical capacity of the Burj Khalifa) going in and out the mine every day and let's see how many start dying per year.

Secondly it's a mine where you make money by digging and continuing to dig, that's not true for this earthscraper

How long will it take and how much will it cost to dig a Burj Khalifa capacity hole 830m deep in the ground, and fill it with a building similar in function and capacity? You really think it'll be cheaper?

The Burj Khalifa took 7 years and 1.5 billion dollars.

Re:Question:

[Nadaka]

Sea level doesn't matter. It is the lowest point in a large valley without any drainage. They are talking about building an underground building in a lake that has had filled in with junk and paved over.

Re:Question:

[nschubach]

Sunlight can potentially be "piped" in via mirrors and columns. You could also setup some sort of moving tables to alternate what craps get light on any particular day. I'm not a plant expert by any means, but I'm pretty sure they don't need light every minute of every day to grow.

Re:Question:

[jrq]

The air pressure and temperature however, would be unbearable at -3900m

Re:Question:

[mikael]

If you have a housing crisis severe enough to require constructing earthscrapers, you could probably use all that rock for the building materials as well as land reclamation on coastal areas.

Alternatively, just look for disused quarries - they will have solved the problem for you. You can then build the earthscraper right there.

That's how the Victorians built many British cities. They chose a location that had a number of hills, then excavated away the topsoil and kept it for use later in landscaped gardens. They then used dynamite to flatten hill-tops and use the debris as building material to build in and over the valleys, thus creating instant basements.

Re:Question:

[djdavetrouble]

add:

Carlos Helu Slim, worlds richest man, a mexican.

Re:Question:

[amorsen]

nschubach has it right with the mirrors etc. There is obviously a limit to how many stories you could do, but 3 or 4 should be easy in the subtropics. "Easy" in comparison to shipping billions of people into space, that is.

Re:Question:

[networkBoy]

not all crops need full sun.
the building should be narrow and long with the long face pointed such that it gets the most sun.
plants that need the most light go closest to the windows, while mushrooms and such can go on the far side.

for some crops this won't work, but for others (potatoes, tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers, etc.) it should work fine.
-nB

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

For a bachelor's degree holder, you seem to be overlooking an obvious solution to our food problems. Yes, eventually, there will not be enough arable surface area to grow enough food for everyone using efficient methods. We are not at that point, yet : there is plenty of food but low technology countries ruled by genocidal dictators prevent the food from reaching those who need it.

Anyways, once we run out of arable land we then have to start irrigating more land and growing more efficient crops. Obviously, getting irrigation water costs more energy than waiting for rainfall, with the energy costs scaling with the difficulty. (it costs a little energy to pump from an aquifier, a lot to pump from a Great Lake, and a huge amount of energy to desalinate seawater)

Right now our best energy sources involve dumping pollutants into the atmosphere, this isn't something we can do forever. So that problems needs solving.

Then once we run out of land we can irrigate, it's time to go multi-story. 2 story enclosed farms with grow LEDs on the bottom floors would double our surface area in one step. Genetically engineered algae in big tanks, engineered for maximum photosynthetic efficiency is another step up. Artificial meat that doesn't need the nutrients to grow an entire animal, just the edible muscle helps out.

Just stopping here, that's enough for at least 20 or 30 billion people. Probably more.

Space travel is the highest energy cost of all, a giant mountain that has to be climbed to get even a kilogram of payload to orbit. Even if we had more efficient launch systems that just used energy directly (like a huge bank of lasers and a spacecraft with an inert block of metal strapped to the bottom as propellant) the cost would be very high at current electricity prices.

It won't ever make economic sense to solve this problem with space travel until the 'beehive' of farms and living quarters stacked on top of each other, covering most of the good building spots on the planet, is more expensive to expand than going to space.

Energy costs aren't the only consideration..at a certain point, going to a frontier where there are few regulations might be cheaper than trying to do something on earth due to bureaucracy and legal costs.

That's right, space travel might someday become cheaper than paying lawyers to fight for the right to build something on earth.

Re:Question:

[BasilBrush]

But I don't want any of that. I'd rather just sing!

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Use it elsewhere to bury the drug lords, alive.

Re:Question:

[Grishnakh]

There's a problem with this idea: you're now assuming that there's no other buildings right next to it, blocking the light. If you have all this free land next to the building to just leave unused, it doesn't sound like you have that much of a space problem in the first place. I suppose you could reserve this space for yet more farmland, so you're getting more crop-growing footage than you would with no building at all, but still, it does place some restrictions on what can be nearby.

Re:Question:

[tmosley]

Floating minerals would be mighty valuable. Hell, I bet we'd fly to a nearby system with a moon populated with wild and fantastic creatures to get it.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Up here on the Mesabi iron range, the idea of a giant hole in the ground is not so ridiculous. We blast rock with dynamite and shovel it out, been doing it for a century or so. We've got a 163 meter deep hole here, and yes we need pumps to keep it from being a lake. When they turn off the pumps it takes a few years for it to become a lake, so people should have some time to get out. They could use the pumped water for drinking water. Looks like Mexico City is pretty safe from tsunamis on account it's 2400 meters above the sea. When the river she rises, that'd be the issue, but it looks like this is the old part of town, so it may be out of the flood plain. Maybe digging a few unused floors underneath as a buffer would account for that.
  As far as ventilation is concerned, I'm sure that would have to be an active process as well as it is in any modern skyscraper, as I don't see windows open on many of them.
The temperature gets to be pretty stable underground, I bet this wouldn't take much energy to cool or heat. I wonder if that'd off set the extra ventilation and pumping costs.

For earthquakes, it looks like you have maybe part of a floor above you and a glass roof to worry about falling on your head, instead of the whole building.

Re:Question:

[Migraineman]

I was looking for the "logistics" details. They're proposing a mixed-use application. Residences require furniture and other durable goods, and the meatbag residents require a number of consumable goods. While building through the water table presents an interesting engienering challenge, the long-term support logistics are even more challenging. Are they expecting to bring all peopl and materials in through the subway system? There had better be several maintenance and service decks similar to the utilidor structures found under Disney World. Materials transportation within the structure will require serious thought too. I would expect there to be a warehouse and loading dock transfer station on the surface somewhere, you know, convenient for the trucks. Every building I've ever seen has a service entrance.

Re:Question:

[Lumpy]

The problem with earthen homes and earth berm homes is NOT difficulty but Local laws that forbid "wierd" homes and idiot home buyers that want a home that looks like everyone elses cookie cutter.

you CAN build a home in the ground easier than building upwards. and most homes do it both ways by building up and down... I.E. the rare "basement" part of a lot of homes. Poured cement walls or cinder brick are far easier to build than stick frame. and a earthen home only has windows on one side and a series of skylite shafts.

the drawback is that they need that wall situated to the south in the Northern hemisphere or to the north in the southern hemisphere.

Oh and they need to be on a decent sized plot of land and a hill to build into. In the city, it's easier to build 3 walls and use the building next to you as the 4th wall. In fact cities are impossible to build efficient housing and buildings, because cities in general are pretty darn half assed.

you CAN build efficient cities, but it requires people to do what they are told by a grand architect and beaten when they ask for something stupid. Even planned cities like Washington DC are completely half assed.

Re:Question:

[Lumpy]

air movement is not hard. Mines do it all the time because they secretly have people down there doing the work.

Re:Question:

[Lumpy]

"With glass over the top, there's a risk of frying people, "

I am certain they are not stupid enough to make it a Fresnel lens or a magnifying glass.

And if you have a couple of vent towers with the air intakes piped to the bottom of the shaft, heat convection will refresh the air automatically and for free.

Re:Question:

[Lumpy]

actually the value of minerals 830 miles in the air are quite high. There is a lot of dead satelites made of aluminum and precious metals up there.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dig another hole to put the dirt in.

This sounds strangely like our global banking system.

Re:Question:

[Jarik C-Bol]

I dunno, they *are* talking about digging a 65 story deep hole in a swamp. They might actually want a Fresnel lens. (to vaporize the water that's going to leak in)

Re:Question:

[Vaylent]

I believe that the gardens are probably going to be more a psychological feature than an actual engineering feature. Windowless buildings/rooms are really boring, and they make terrible places to spend a lot of your time.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a vulture, but an eagle as shown on the Mexican coat of arms..

Re:Question:

[_4rp4n3t]

You could also setup some sort of moving tables to alternate what craps get light on any particular day

Personally I don't care to let any of my craps see the light of day...

Re:Question:

[Em Adespoton]

I wonder if they're planning to use the gardens for drainage and moisture control too?
I'd just hate to be living on the floor under one of the garden floors 20 years after the thing is built....

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had mod points in two years, and I've never been more disappointed than this moment...

Re:Question:

[mdielmann]

Technically, zero, for both. One is an office building, the other is a hole to dig resources out of.Both are doubtless a warren of tunnels that people pass through daily. You were looking for the technical answer, right? Because the realistic answer is that both could be converted to living space with varying amounts of difficulty. Mines (and office buildings) have been converted to residential facilities before.

Re:Question:

[anubi]

They might wanna borrow some technology from the Iranians, known as a "badgir" (windcatcher).

http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/learning-knowledge-medicine/professor-s-roaf-badgir-irans-ancient-air-conditioning-system/

Re:Question:

[anubi]

Yes, the ones that are used for air condititioning are called "badgirs" (windcatchers).

http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/learning-knowledge-medicine/professor-s-roaf-badgir-irans-ancient-air-conditioning-system/

I posted the same link above. I had not read all the replies yet. Sorry.

I am an admirer of this technology, hence my chomping at the bit...

Re:Question:

[hhbuitrago]

Then raise it more. There are lots of places in Mexico City that would be flooded but for the MASSIVE draining system, so build up those sites, while you wait for the new building to fail in any of several amusing ways that have been sugested in other comments.

Re:Question:

[RespekMyAthorati]

Yes, the ones that are used for air condititioning are called "badgirs"

We don't need no steekin badgirs.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Absurd proposal. Judging from construction projects here in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, also built in a swamp, I would say that this is a very bad idea. Not only is it completely impossible: just the attempt to make a hole this big will endanger building foundations all over the Mexico city valley, even if you go just a few floors down. A leak of a few hours in the construction site will cause major damage to the city, even if you are very good at regulating water tables generally.

Re:Question:

[Ginger Unicorn]

now, they want to dig DOWN,

no, no, dig UP, stupid!

Re:Question:

[MagusSlurpy]

I'm also curious to know how long the building would have to last to recover the energy involved in excavating that hole compared to building upwards.

Re:Question:

[Runaway1956]

Looks like a vulture to me. And, bearing in mind that the Azteca were a death worshipping people, the vulture is appropriate. There was no love lost between my Native American ancestors, and the Azteca. The only vile act of which I've never heard the Azteca committing, is canabilism. Everything else, yep, it's history.

Re:Question:

[Toad-san]

World's deepest flooded mine?

http://www.damninteresting.com/lake-peigneur-the-swirling-vortex-of-doom/

And probably some of the flooded mines in South Africa.

Nope, digging down very far into Mexico City's foundations is not a very good idea. Admittedly it was a very shallow lake, but it was a lake ne'er the less.

Re:Question:

[LaRainette]

It's MUCH cheaper to build underground, but it's also much less sexy and confortable (I'm thinking of the light)
OTOH No underground structure has ever block sunlight from its neighbours which is kind of nice.
Troglodytes predate skyscrapers AFAIK.

Re:Question:

[LaRainette]

World's tallest I-got-a-fucking-747-in-da-face-then-crumbled-to-the-ground skyscraper ?
It's not stupid, it's a technological challenge, the kind that used to make the USA move forward before we lost all hope in ourselves and focused on making money speculating on how many africans are going to starve to death this year.

Re:Question:

[LaRainette]

1) Change heat dissipation => heat usage for power production.
2) Let Jelly guy be jelly
3) Think american might want to get back to work instead of speculating on the price of rice and the number of african starving to death.
4) (durable) PROFITS !

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Windowless buildings/rooms are really boring, and they make terrible places to spend a lot of your time.

Blasphemy! This is Slashdot. The stronghold of basement dwelling bearded virgins...

Re:Question:

[GodGell]

We have some pretty detailed information about which parts of the spectrum plants use, and we can combine that with energy-efficient light sources. Today's LED tech is already good enough that you can realistically grow plants under nothing more than arrays of red and blue high-power LEDs (remember, plants are green because they don't absorb green light). The problem is, you need a lot of those LEDs, and that makes them currently so expensive that inefficient incandescents are more economical for anything more than a few plants.

Add in a couple years' worth of advancement in the field of lighting technology, driving the price of the "current high-tech" down to affordable levels, and we will reach the point where growing crops with LED-generated light starts becoming economically viable.

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't this more like a open pit mine that is built up and less like a cave that gets furnished?

Re:Question:

[Smallpond]

Value of antenna 3900 m in the ground?
Value of antenna 830 m in the air?

Hey! This is fun.

Re:Question:

[Coren22]

3900 miles underground would be quite an achievement, how deep is the core of the earth anyways? Google tells me is is approximately 3950 miles, which would contain some pretty valuable heave metals I imagine.

Re:Question:

[Coren22]

Because the Umbrella corporation needs a place to study viruses that could cause a world wide zombie apocalypse. If they just put an AI named the Red Queen in charge, everything should be just fine.

Re:Question:

[0100010001010011]

Value of antenna 830 m in the air?

Hey! This is fun.

They're called satellites, we do spend quite a bit on them.

Re:Question:

[eugene ts wong]

Or better yet, let the free market handle it!

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an awful idea. Can't wait until it's finished and there are huge problems with water leaking in, with all the fun stuff that entails.

Re:lol

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Don't forget they have major earthquakes here.
I remember the last one, it caused far more damage than it should have because the earthquake 'waves' were bouncing off a 'wall' at the edge of the city and there was a ripple-effect. In one spot two waves would reinforce each other, nearby they would cancel each other out. One of the recent earthquakes in New Zealand caused similar problems.

Re:lol

[ZeroExistenZ]

Or surface tension, pressure, Earth movement, ...

Although, at that depth you can get creative with rainwater seeping down and you can store your heat of the summer/cold of the winter in the ground to inverse while the season changes. (see Geothermal heat pump)

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't forget they have major earthquakes here."

Yep and in countries where houses are not built with ticky tacky wood, people run into their cellar for the safest place. This pyramid has 65 levels of cellar.

Re:lol

[adonoman]

Surround this with one of those sound-wave invisibility metamaterials, and the earthquake can just pass around it, without affecting it.

Re:lol

[SuricouRaven]

Pumps.

Re:lol

[hhbuitrago]

I remember seeing a show about the construction of the new building for the Mexican Senate. They build several sub surface levels by drilling deep columns of support, pouring a giant slab with a few holes and excavating the dirt of a level underneath and repeating the process. When they got to the fourth or fifth level down, they realized that the flow of water and silt under the building against the columns had tilted the columns enough that the vector of weight of the upper levels fell outside the base of the column, and they had to wrap the columns with additional concrete and reinforcemente making them way wider on all the levels.
If the volume of flow, just 4 to 5 levels down, against just the width of a column, is capable of displacing it so much, imagine the force against something the size and depth of this. And it will vary greatly with depth, until you get to rock, if there is some reachable down there.

Re:lol

[LaRainette]

"AHAH LULZ THEM MEXICANS SO STUPID ! THEM BUILDING UNDERGROUND WHEN THEM HAVING EARTHQUAKES ! LUUULZ"
Said the idiot american who coincidentally builds 90% of its east coast houses with woods where there are a dozen Hurricanes every year...
You better off inside a bunker-like cellar than at the top of a skyscraper during a Earthquake. I could do the maths but you wouldn't understand it.

sunlight how?

[w_dragon]

They're going to use translucent floors to get sunlight to the bottom? Great idea. Domain squatters, now would probably be the time to grab pyramidupskirt.com.

Re:sunlight how?

[loftwyr]

Ummm "through clear or translucent core walls". Read it again.

Re:sunlight how?

[skids]

No, translucent walls. Most of the structure will be open air inside.

Oh, and translucent != transparent.

But the whole thing is covered over in glass. I assume they intend to keep the square a "square" and people will be able to walk around on the glass roof. In which case, given it's Mexico, I sure hope it's bulletproof.

Re:sunlight how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparent aluminum floors? More seriously though, what about the problem of sinkholes like this one in Guatemala? That particular sinkhole ate a 3-story building.

Re:sunlight how?

[uigrad_2000]

All the concept art in the technology review article clearly shows transparent floors.

The way I understand "clear or transparent core walls", some floors will have clear, others would have transparent. It seems obvious to me that the first 10 stores (shopping malls, etc) would have transparent walls, so that the space would feel more natural.

Whether pedestrians are allowed to walk across the glass courtyard is a different question.

Re:sunlight how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm

From the TFA "The Earthscraper concept begins with a glass roof replacing the opaque stone surface of the Zocalo preserving"

Whole point of a glass roof replacing the plaza is to get LIGHT down to the lower levels.

That is going to have to be some strong glass to hold its own weight and all the people walking/standing/dancing on it. Will there be a count limit like at the glass overhang thing in the Grand Canyon?

Re:sunlight how?

[lwsimon]

Do you mean "transparent" vs "opaque"? Your use of "clear" and "transparent" confused me.

Re:sunlight how?

[Grishnakh]

This seems like a great application for transparent aluminum.

Re:sunlight how?

[AvitarX]

It's implied that they would, as one of the boons was usage of the surface space.

Re:sunlight how?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a foot fetish, and I'm already looking for a apartment in the bottom floor and a nice telescope. ^^

geofront?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope we don't find any angels while we dig up for those :p

Re:geofront?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, they already found devils in the sky while building up....

Re:geofront?

[Tomato42]

Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion, you're lacking in Popculture references.

Re:geofront?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just to be clear, we're lacking in YOUR pop culture references, so WE'RE the wrong ones. Gotcha. That's clearly not at all self-centered. Not at all. Clearly. Noooooo.

Re:geofront?

[jockeys]

Damn, you beat me to it. This is entirely a geofront. all the need are buildings that slide up and down.

Re:geofront?

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular Culture infers "consensus within the mainstream." Not everyone knows about some niche show/anime/whatever that is.

Re:geofront?

[Puggs]

I was wondering how long it would be before the NGE references crept in :o)

2000 AD Judge Dredd ?

[wood_dude]

Snuggle Down Warrens anyone ?

Re:2000 AD Judge Dredd ?

[0123456]

That was my first thought when I saw this. They clearly don't read their comics or they'd know what a bad idea it is.

No Windows

[Oswald McWeany]

One of the things I hate about my current job is that there are no windows anywhere near where I am seated.

I frequently go weeks in winter without seeing sunlight because it is dark when I get to work and dark when I leave.

I find windowless offices to be very dreary and depressing. Only the economy keeps me in this dreary place.

Re:No Windows

[tverbeek]

I'd love to work in an office without Windows. :rimshot:

But if I'm reading the design sketches correctly, many of the offices in this structure will have windows. It will have an inverted-pyramid-shape "courtyard" down the middle of it, which will take up much of the volume and allow for plenty of windows.

Re:No Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA before trolling. The inverted pyramid has access to sunlight in the open core with it's translucent ceiling.

Re:No Windows

[Oswald McWeany]

How much of that light will be available below the first few stories?

If you go down to the bottom of a deep old-fashioned well- or a deep vertical cave the sky looks black even in daylight. - the diagnol light coming from the sun doesn't reach the bottom.

The windows is more than just light too- I could have a window into my neighbours cube but it wouldn't do anything for me.

There is nothing the same psychologically like seeing the outside world.

Sure- real daylight with it's particular hues is a help- but a window onto a central core wouldn't be the same.

You don't see the sun- the sky, the weather- birds, etc.

Re:No Windows

[Metabolife]

They can then take the lighting from the edges and the courtyard and funnel it through fiber to the rest of the apartments. After that they can but a webcam outside and put a nice LCD screen so everyone can have that breathtaking Mexico City view.

Re:No Windows

[balbord]

mirrors! lot's of mirrors.

Re:No Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler.

Re:No Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I frequently go weeks in winter without seeing sunlight because it is dark when I get to work and dark when I leave.

Are there no weekends where you work?

Re:No Windows

[blackraven14250]

It's a reverse pyramid. They can slope it so that lots of diagonal light makes it into the area.

Re:No Windows

[timeOday]

Ah, but the walls aren't vertical. To me, this idea resembles the Luxor hotel/casino in Las Vegas, except inverted. If you have ever been inside it, every room has an unobstructed view of the casino area on the first floor - which in this case would be the sky.

Still, it's true you'd probably only have a skylight at the edge of your room, so maybe not good enough.

Re:No Windows

[sootman]

Solved problem.

No, you don't have a view, but they carry actual sunlight, so you get the little natural variations in intensity (caused by clouds, etc.) that make people more comfortable in addition to natural coloring. And it doesn't have to be straight-line basic skylights, either--you can use fiber optics to carry light pretty far down.

Re:No Windows

[wideBlueSkies]

No thanks. It'll be like working in a glorified basement.

Re:No Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. And I used to live in an above ground apartment complex. My view? Another apartment complex, ugly concrete forms. Much like what will be constructed underground.

It sucked. But at least it was above ground.

Re:No Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I'm not sure it wouldn't be without it's own ecology. Have you ever been in a big box store and noticed a little house finch or sparrow that has taken up residence? In an open air space like the central core and all the nesting space and gardens, a founding population of these little brown jobbies would build up even if the designers didn't intend it. Plenty of food crumbs and natural food sources.

It could be lovely if they planned it with a mix of compatible, colorful species and a decent management program. Of course then you have to modify you window-cleaning program.

Design is hard.

M

floodings...

[G3ckoG33k]

floodings...

Think of the giant sinkhole in Guatemala

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QT46LGcz9w

Re:floodings...

[Smallpond]

Think of the fact that Mexico City is built on a lake.

Re:floodings...

[G3ckoG33k]

A Smallpond perhaps? ;)

upsetting the natives

[tverbeek]

The Mole Men are not going to be happy about this.

Earthquake...?

[saleenS281]

And what happens to all this glass when another huge earthquake hits?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Mexico_City_earthquake

Re:Earthquake...?

[qualityassurancedept]

I would rather be in a giant hole than on top of a high rise building in an Earthquake. I am sure they can design the whole think to basically float inside a shell of bedrock.... like shock absorbers on a car. If they are building the structure from nothing, then huge shock absorbers would be easy enough to install.

Re:Earthquake...?

[adonoman]

I think I saw something like that on Ducktales.

Re:Earthquake...?

[SuricouRaven]

They could, and have in existing underground buildings. I've been to one in the southeast UK - former cold-war command centre, now museum. It's built to withstand a nearby nuclear explosion, and does use the shock absorber technique on the whole structure. The US has a similar concept for NORAD, though they use individually isolated building sections on independant shock absorbers rather than a single structure enclosing the whole complex.

Re:Earthquake...?

[saleenS281]

Shock absorbers do exactly nothing when the surrounding soil isn't solid.

Re:Earthquake...?

[bazorg]

700000 years of bad luck?

Re:Earthquake...?

[lamber45]

Forget earthquakes. On a typical sunny day the Zocalo is filled with Aztec ceremonial dancers stomping, peddlers selling imported Korean and Chinese goods, and hundreds or even thousands of tourists. I hope they're planning to use glass block rather than traditional "windows"; and will even that stand up to all the foot and hand-cart traffic?

On the other hand, sewage / drainage isn't as big a problem there as it would be in a coastal city. Mexico City is at an altitude of 7,900 feet, and a couple centuries ago they drained the lake-bed by digging tunnels along the lowest nearby mountain-pass.

Re:Earthquake...?

[qualityassurancedept]

I am pretty sure they would anchor it to bedrock.... and the surrounding soil would function like a big pillow wrapped around the whole structure.

Re:Earthquake...?

[saleenS281]

Ya, there is no bedrock there, but great idea! Mexico city was built in a lakebed - unless they're planning on putting their pyramid about 1000 feet down, they're going to be working with sand and rock, then sand, then clay.

The surrounding soil doesn't act like a "pillow" it acts like an amplifier. Apparently you should read the first link I posted.

Re:Earthquake...?

[qualityassurancedept]

A thousand feet isnt that far down. I think the skyscrapers in Manhattan are sometimes anchored to bedrock that far down or at least close to that.

Earthquakes

[necro81]

Mexico City has been hit by some pretty nasty earthquakes over the years. I don't know if this design would be at all better or worse, but none of the linked-to articles make any mention of it. On the plus side, you don't need to worry about swaying or liquifaction - the structure is supported on all sides by bedrock. On the down side, the structure is supported on all sides by bedrock ... bedrock that is likely shifting inexorably around.

Re:Earthquakes

[necro81]

Ah - as it turns out, Mexico City is built on an old lakebed. It isn't bedrock at all, but rather poorly drained soil. From one of the articles:

Some facets of the Earthscraper design are so conceptual as to need inventing. One of these would involve finding a way to build so deeply into the water-soaked soil that supports—or fails to support—contemporary Mexico City.

When the Aztecs first built Tenochtitlan in 1325, this area—a valley ringed by mountains and volcanoes that reach heights of over 16,000 feet—was mostly covered by Lake Texcoco, with no natural drainage.

The Aztecs expanded Tenochtitlan’s area by filling the lake immediately around it, and created dam and channel systems to control the lake’s height.

After conquering Tenochtitlan in 1521, Spain established Mexico City atop its ruins. Efforts to drain the lake commenced in the 17th century; today nearly the entire valley is paved over. Pumping out the groundwater has caused parts of Mexico City to sink as much as 30 feet into the soft clay lakebed. The city also struggles with pumping wastewater and runoff out of the valley, as well as flooding.

So, in case of an earthquake, the surrounding soil would indeed liquifact, and the inhabitants would be totally screwed.

Re:Earthquakes

[djsmiley]

Last time i checked, the earthquake moves along fault lines, and teh most damaged buildings are the ones without support.... so unless this earthquake found a fault directly through the middle of the complex I don't think much would happen at all during an earth quake...

Re:Earthquakes

[necro81]

Earthquakes propagate in waves much like waves in the ocean. While there may be no net movement between different points of this building after the quake has passed, during the quake there will be relative movement, and that would cause real problems.

Back to caves

[Fujisawa Sensei]

I guess its back to living in caves then. Even a man made cave is still a hole in the ground .

Re:Hope the power doesn't go out on those sump pum

[DeadDecoy]

Or if there's a fire out grounds level, how do you get everyone out?

Moria 2.0

[Tenek]

Construction will have to be stopped after they dig too deep and release the Balrog, though.

Re:Moria 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

in case that happens, my money is on the chupacabras.

Re:Moria 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hombres dug too greedily and too deep.

Good concept...

[Oswald McWeany]

Good concept though for when we start colonizing other planets. :)

Underground living spaces will probably be the norm on Mars or the Moon should we ever colonize them.

Lower costs on keeping us warm in the cold of space.

Of course- that is, if we ever leave earth before the Klackons destroy us.

Re:Good concept...

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for moo2 reference

Re:Good concept...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why they should try building this. Nobody is going to pay for a project like this if it were merely an experiment; it needs to have real commercial value. But we won't really learn enough about building subterranean structures of this magnitude until someone actually does it. I think it's a great idea. As a species, we will gain more knowledge and learned another way something does or does not work.

Plus, I'm not Mexican. If it fails, I can rest assured knowing my government didn't blow a bunch of money on a project that was doomed from the start. We already have enough of those.

Re:Good concept...

[Anonymous Coward]

In space, it's not the cold you have to worry about, it's the heat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_insulation#Spacecraft

Re:Good concept...

[Anonymous Coward]

if we ever leave earth before the Klackons destroy us.

I, for one, welcome our Elerian over...ladies?, and wish to remind them that I'd be perfectly content to sit at home all day and make sure dinner's on the table for them when they get home from the research center.

Re:Good concept...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course- that is, if we ever leave earth before the *deficit spending* destroys us.

Fixed that for you?

What about the buoyancy of this building?

[VitaminB52]

Ground water will cause a lot of buoyancy for this building - how will they prevent it from 'floating' upward? Other than using very thick walls from heavy construction materials?

Re:What about the buoyancy of this building?

[jmottram08]

If they were smart they would put 3-4 floors above ground to help with this problem, as well as not wasting the space above ground level.

Re:What about the buoyancy of this building?

[ShakaUVM]

>>Ground water will cause a lot of buoyancy for this building - how will they prevent it from 'floating' upward?

Oh, lord. While I know that's probably a serious question, I just had a very entertaining minute imagining an "earthscraper" bobbing up out of the ground and knocking around like a top. =)

Re:What about the buoyancy of this building?

[tompaulco]

Ground water will cause a lot of buoyancy for this building - how will they prevent it from 'floating' upward? Other than using very thick walls from heavy construction materials?
Same as a swimming pool. Keep it full of water to counteract the pressure.

Re:What about the buoyancy of this building?

[VitaminB52]

If they were smart they would put 3-4 floors above ground to help with this problem

That's hardly sufficient to counteract the upward buoyancy of the 65 subterranean levels.
Think about 20-30 levels above groundlevel to get the job done - which is not an option given the laws against highrise buildings mentioned in TFA.

Re:What about the buoyancy of this building?

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers already had to calculate that just to build the Metro subway system in Mexico City, the tunnels are basically floating on the soft soil of the city, after the 1985 earthquake, the subway was the only way to reach many devastated areas of the city for the rescue teams.

Re:What about the buoyancy of this building?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that we can build an Earthscraper that, in a few years, will turn into a Skyscraper for free?

Re:Hope the power doesn't go out on those sump pum

[mosb1000]

Groundwater moves very slowly. You'd have time to get out.

there is a reason this hasn't been done....

[Brigadier]

I think this idea has been thought of in many arch programs, however from a practical side it's a dozy. The cost to excavate, the cost to transport the soil, dealing with ground water issue, 100 year flood conditions. even though it is a pyramid the retaining walls would have to be monstrous. Plus if anyone has ever seen what happens to an empty in-ground pool, there is reason for concern. I would put this out there with the floating island concept.

Re:there is a reason this hasn't been done....

[argStyopa]

No question, but as a response to the architectural concept of the arcology, I'm not sure that this is such a bad answer - certainly, the engineering challenges are massive but I think this is a fairly brilliant answer.

Plus hey, whenever I try a megaproject like this in Dwarf Fortress, it inevitably results in fun (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Fun).

What do you do with the millions of tons of dirt? Send them to the coast, and build more land?

Re:Hope the power doesn't go out on those sump pum

[advocate_one]

Or if there's a fire out grounds level, how do you get everyone out?

same way you get everybody out from the upper levels of a skyscraper when there's a fire at ground level... via protected fire staircases with anti-smoke doors etc.

This is just plain silly

[sunking2]

A ridiculous idea from the beginning, but when I got to the point where they think they can have a few gardens to replace the need for outside ventilation I had to laugh.

Re:This is just plain silly

[Shatrat]

I suspect that the intended effect is mostly psychological (but no less real), and there will be plenty of outside ventilation.

Re:This is just plain silly

[Anonymous Coward]

"A ridiculous idea from the beginning,..."

A 65 level deep saferoom/bomb shelter.
Most survivalists and paranoids would pay an arm and a leg to get in there.

English, do you speak it?

[Anonymous Coward]

a 65-story, 82,000-square-foot inverted pyramid beneath Mexico City takes a new approach

Wow, since this is written in present tense it must already be there.

The proposed building will be located

Now that you've switch tense, obviously it isn't already there.

Re:English, do you speak it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, people are planning (present tense) to do something in the future. If you find this that hard to understand, I can't wait until we invent time travel, that'll really blow your mind!

Re:English, do you speak it?

[PPH]

Its there. They just need to remove the dirt from on top of it.

Re:English, do you speak it?

[Megane]

You think that's bad? You haven't clicked on the thetechnologyreview.net link yet, have you?

This bold Earth scraper idea as of BNKR Aquitectura seek to deal with many issues face via Mexico town a rising populace the shortage of latest plot for building the requirement to preserve momentous buildings and tallness limitations at latest structure.

The momentous center of Mexico town is into anxious would like for a practical create more say BNKR.

As they say on the internets, "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"

Flood Danger

[nostrumuva]

I'm betting the CEO would still prefer the top-most floor. If there were a flood and you were the guy in the office in the inverse peak, you'd be doomed.

Mexican engineering

[Dunbal]

Yes I can trust them to pump sewage up 65 floors with absolutely no problems what so ever...

Re:Mexican engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the least of the problems they will have to overcome.

There are many very good reasons why no one has done this before. This thing will never be built. It's an impracticable concept.

Re:Mexican engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you name the top three problems that make this impracticable? Saying "trust me it doesn't work" just doesn't cut it on a discussion forum.

Re:Mexican engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the least of the problems they will have to overcome.

There are many very good reasons why no one has done this before. This thing will never be built. It's an impracticable concept.

So are skyscrapers over 10 stories tall. It is just impossible.

Re:Mexican engineering

[jmottram08]

1) The whole building will float up. You're displacing a lot of water with a hole 600 feet in the ground

2) Fire hazards. You want to climb 600 feet up while teh fire is sucking away all of your O2?

3) Earthquakes / floods.

Re:Mexican engineering

[roman_mir]

No no, that's not what they are going to do. The top bras will sit on the ground floor and the lower in rank you are the lower the floor you'll be located on, this way the sewage doesn't have to be pumped out, you put on your wet suit and maybe a mask, take a flash light and sort of swim to your desk. What you'll be swimming in depends on how important your place in the corporate pyramid is.

Re:Mexican engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that was harsh. But it's ok, I've used "American culture" in a sarcastic context before so let's call it even.

Re:Mexican engineering

[WindBourne]

Oddly, the exact same issues apply to skyscrapers.

Better coverage

[Yev000]

This seems to provide more information: http://inhabitat.com/bnkr-arquitectura-reveals-plans-for-an-incredible-underground-skyscraper-in-mexico-city/bnrk-earthscraper11/?extend=1

Over the past few decades, Mexico City has seen an enormous population boom. Though the steady influx of people is great, the city center is in desperate need of more office, retail, and living space. However, because of Mexico City’s historical significance, federal and local law prohibit the destruction of historical buildings (which is nearly everything) and have placed strict height regulations on new structures, keeping them shorter than eight stories. Thus, with nowhere to go, BNKR decided to invert a massive building design that digs deep into the heart of the city.

The first 10 stories of the structure will be a Pre-Columbian museum. The glass ceiling will allow people walking through the plaza to enjoy the artifacts below as well. The next 10 stories will be for retail and housing. These floors were put below the museum so people would have to travel through it and explore the history of the city they would perhaps otherwise ignore. The following 35 floors will be office spaces.

The whole design boasts a massive central void that allows natural light and ventilation to flow through every single floor. The “Earth Lobbies” on every 10th level also helps keep the building air fresh and clean, with enormous plant beds and vertical gardens filtering air toxins and producing more oxygen. These lobbies also serve as an open and clean communal area to break up and brighten the structure.

The very bottom floors of the Earthscraper are for all of the technical parts of the building. A water turbine generator pushes water into the exterior wall pumps and recycles used and clean water for the building’s facilities while also powering most of the electricity.

Named the Zocalo, the 190,000 square foot city center plaza is the ideal spot for an earthscraper. Surrounded by monuments like the Metropolitan Cathedral, National Palace, and Constitution Square, as well as a massive underground subway station, it is one of the most heavily trafficked sites of the city. BNKR’s design allows for the historical aesthetics of the plaza to remain while a bustling eco-center hums underground.

Re:Better coverage

[Oswald McWeany]

The core would have to be quite large for sunlight to reach all the way down. Plus windows looking inwards wouldn't have the same psychological effect as windows on the outside world.

Still, an interesting idea.

As well as natural light- I'd want 3d large high definition "windows" on plasma screens broardcasting a live video feed of the outside. That way my office could be located anywhere in the world.

Re:Perhaps Mexico isn't really the best place.

[stiggle]

Not forgetting that Mexico City is built on what used to be a swampy lake so will have serious drainage issues when they go deep.

If they allow seepage and then pump it out they'll basically be draining the whole area and so create issues for the local flora.

Best place to try it

[trout007]

The best place to try it is where there is an existing hole. Look for an abandoned mine or quarry.

Or find somewhere where there is stuff in the ground that you want. Coal comes to mind. You could mine the coal in an inverted pyramid and then put glass over it. Done.

Re:Best place to try it

[Oswald McWeany]

Yes... although- there has to be a need for the building to be in place. Most coal mines, quarries, etc, don't exist in places where a) many people care to live/work in dense numbers b) land is expensive- it is cheaper to build horizontally than vertically in those places.

You tend to only find large vertical buildings where sq.ft of land is expensive- you don't find many skyscrapers in West Virginia in the mining communities- so there won't be much demand for earthscrapers either.

Re:Best place to try it

[Anonymous Coward]

Mines and quarries are usually far away from cities; there's enough space for conventional construction. The number of inner-city quarries is fairly small. Plus there's the issue of getting investments and people willing to live in some remote location without connection to "the civilised world".

Re:Best place to try it

[nschubach]

Only because I've driven over it about 50 times:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=chicago&hl=en&ll=41.578422,-87.616525&spn=0.014366,0.033023&hnear=Chicago,+Cook,+Illinois&gl=us&sqi=2&t=h&z=16&vpsrc=6

Re:Best place to try it

[Spectre]

Kansas City (Kansas and Missouri) is built over and around a number of existing salt mines. Due to the stable nature of the salt mines (few earthquakes, water table is significantly deeper than the mines, etc) many of the no longer active mines have been converted to office space and/or climate-controlled commercial and public storage, etc.

These don't go nearly as deep as the proposed building in the article, though.

Re:Best place to try it

[trout007]

Cool. Looks better in birds-eye

http://binged.it/vCokBk

Re:Best place to try it

[Oswald McWeany]

Some places, such as the above doubtless exist- although I think most urban centres don't have caves or mines nearby (or if they did have probably been filled in.

From what you say above though- sounds like they already HAVE taken advantage of the mines.

As an interesting aside; back in Britain, the crown jewels were hidden in the salt mines near Northwich during WWII (allegedly).

UIUC undergrad library

[uigrad_2000]

Reminds me a little of our library. I would be able to see it from my window if they had built it above ground, but they chose to go down instead.

The legend of this decision lives on through a song about the Morrow Plots. As the song goes, "You Can't Throw Shade on The Corn!"

The Morrow Plots were built in 1876 as an experimental field for growing crops, and is the oldest such field in existence in the western hemisphere. It might not sound like that big of a landmark, but the university decided to build our library underground to preserve it.

Re:UIUC undergrad library

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the link that you provided for the Morrow Plots?

"It is popularly believed that the University constructed an undergraduate library with three stories underground, so that the library would not block the sun. However, the University master plan at the time called for a large open plaza on that end of campus, which was an equally important reason the library was built underground."

Re:UIUC undergrad library

[ShakaUVM]

>>Reminds me a little of our library. I would be able to see it from my window if they had built it above ground, but they chose to go down instead.
>>The legend of this decision lives on through a song about the Morrow Plots. As the song goes, "You Can't Throw Shade on The Corn!"

Here in California, we just built the farm underground.

http://www.forestiere-historicalcenter.com/

Re:UIUC undergrad library

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder where the architect got his degree. The University of MN Minneapolis Civil Engineering building is 110 feet into the ground as well.

Re:UIUC undergrad library

[Anonymous Coward]

They did?

From your own link: "It is popularly believed that the University constructed an undergraduate library with three stories underground, so that the library would not block the sun. However, the University master plan at the time called for a large open plaza on that end of campus, which was an equally important reason the library was built underground."

Mexico City = Raccoon City!

[cyberchondriac]

When the hive fails, don't reboot the red queen!

The roof the roof the roof is on fire

[perrin]

It is nice out of the box thinking, but seriously, a glass roof with people walking around on it? First, the angle from the sun into that hole is so bad, you will only have sunlight at the lower end for ... what? a few minutes a day? You need mirrors with that stuff. Second, that glass roof is crying out for disaster. An earthquake or a terrorist bomb would shatter and send it like machine gun fire down at the heads of everyone living below. The glass area needs to be cordoned off totally from anyone and anything on basic safety concerns. Let alone due to the glass losing its translucency as people, you know, make it dirty, scratch it, and generally mess things up. Third, you really want some plan for controlling flooding. Sooner or later it will happen, and you need some way to deal with it. Not sure if they have thought about it, but the design looks pretty intimidating in that respect (one big hole).

We need to start building in depth, but I think the way to go is rather to use mirrors or artificial sunlight, and build many more but smaller structures that are easier to secure against natural and man-made disasters.

Re:The roof the roof the roof is on fire

[tspaghetti]

Also, ladies would have to think twice before walking through the park with skirts.

How transparent will the roof be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will there be warnings to girls in skirts?

Global Warming...

[Oswald McWeany]

Interesting from a global warming standpoint.

1) Interesting to see if this truly is more energy efficient- using the ground to keep temperatures stable... less need to heat/cool. Less fossil fuel burnt?

2) All the ground displaced from projects such as these can be used to build levys to protect us from floods associated with global warming.

Re:Hope the power doesn't go out on those sump pum

[mpcarl]

The problem I see is that walking down stairs is pretty easy and most people can manage a number of floors without a problem. Walking up stairs is a different situation. Many people cannot walk up one or two levels, let alone the number of levels proposed. I think you would need tunnels from several levels going in several directions to escape platforms or safe rooms with elevator or crane access.

Perpetual motion too.

[HornWumpus]

They are going to use a 'water turbine generator' to supply the electricity to pump the water out of the turbines outlets! Then they will use the remaining electricity to run the building. Brilliant! Why hasn't anybody thought of this before?

Also they are planning on recycling 'clean water' out of their sewers. Again brilliant! Montezuma would be proud.

You're forgetting the water table.

[overshoot]

No shit, Sherman. Mexico City is built in a silted-up lakebed. What's more, their sewage processing ... shall we say, leaves a bit to be desired.

So -- how do they plan emergency evacuation of this thing if the pumps fail? Maybe during an earthquake? (Not like Mexico City has those, mind.)

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[Anonymous Coward]

There certainly are problems with pumps always working and with earthquakes, but the problem with pumps failing has been solved for metro's. If you have large underground reservoirs lower then the building the evacuation time-span becomes days. Of course if gravity unexpectedly fails this will not work, but then you have bigger problems. There is a need to work with reservoirs anyhow because peak rainfall will outpace any reasonable pump capacity a few times a year.

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[delinear]

Life jackets by the door. You float up to the top and then, when you get there, the glass roof has a little hammer attached with a sign saying "In case of emergency, break glass" :)

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[blackraven14250]

Funny, that's just about as good an idea as the option of jumping out of a high rise with a parachute.

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[ColdWetDog]

Of course if gravity unexpectedly fails this will not work, but then you have bigger problems.

You win the Understatement of the Week award.

Congratulations.

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[Lumpy]

"how do they plan emergency evacuation of this thing if the pumps fail? Maybe during an earthquake?"

Flotation devices. just float around until you reach the top.

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey there overshoot, just calm down and take a big breath.
No need to be a jerk, just having a casual conversation.
I know you are so excited! But we are all adults here and someday you'll be one too.
Take it easy and don't let so much of your pent-up rage out when you respond.

Re:You're forgetting the water table.

[lessthan]

Check YouTube. People do that. It looks crazy-fun.

Seasons

[overshoot]

I take it you've never been to Mexico City. Seasonal variation isn't a big deal there, being at high altitude in the tropics.

Most houses -- even for the wealthy -- don't bother to have heating or air conditioning.

Pumps

[overshoot]

fail

Re:Pumps

[SuricouRaven]

Pumps work. The mining industry has a lot of experience of digging deep holes and keeping them dry. You just let the water run down to the deepest point, then pump it out.

Re:Pumps

[ColdWetDog]

Pumps work. The mining industry has a lot of experience of digging deep holes and keeping them dry. You just let the water run down to the deepest point, then pump it out.

And then think about the volume of tunnel a mine deals with and the volume of space this project envisions and then calculate the amount of water it's likely to need removed. Then talk to a mining engineer about it. It's likely doable - with a big enough budget.

Re:Pumps

[Captain Hook]

It's not volume which matters, it's surface area with the water table bearing rock which determins how much water is going to get in.

Fire hazard

[tspaghetti]

What happens when a fire breaks out in levels -1 to -4, while you're at level -60?

Re:Fire hazard

[dkleinsc]

Two options:
1. Stay put until the fire department or emergency operator tells you it's OK to leave.
2. Leave via a stairwell that's far from where the fire is.

That's basically the same approach as what you do if you're on level 60 and there's a fire on level 2.

Re:Fire hazard

[Anonymous Coward]

eh, that's easy, fire extinguishes itself once all the oxygen from lower levels is used up...err...so no worries, at least you're in a very deep grave already.

Re:Fire hazard

[leplen]

Since fire tends to burn up (hot air in general being lighter than the alternative), you're actually considerably safer than in a skyscraper, where your only additional exit strategy is the aerial route...

Re:Fire hazard

[jmottram08]

... and the hot air moving up is sucking all the oxygen from the lower floors via the proposed open shaft and / or the regular ventilation. Unless we are literally air-lock sealing people 600 feet below ground, fire is still a big problem.

Re:Fire hazard

[Rary]

Two options:
1. Stay put until the fire department or emergency operator tells you it's OK to leave.
2. Leave via a stairwell that's far from where the fire is.

That's basically the same approach as what you do if you're on level 60 and there's a fire on level 2.

Well, except for the part where you have to walk UP 60 flights of stairs to safety, instead of DOWN.

Glass floors ????

[denbesten]

The glass ceiling will allow people walking through the plaza to enjoy the artifacts below as well.

The geologic forces in an earthquake would pale compared to the crushing force of the first skirt-wearing female in the approval chain.

This idea will never get off the ground (grin). I sense a PR stunt.

Re:Hope the power doesn't go out on those sump pum

[Sique]

There is not much flooding at 6500 ft. about Sea level.

Dutch

[Weezul]

Imho, the Dutch should invest in this technology.

Re:Mexican engineering - Fire Safety

[archer, the]

I also wouldn't want to see a fire in one of these. I suspect it's bad enough trying to climb down 60 floors in an emergency. Can you imagine trying to climb *up* 60 floors when the building is on fire?

You Fools!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't move in there! Haven't you watched the Cube ?!

Conditional tense

[Anonymous Coward]

English has a conditional tense that we use to describe things that are not certain to happen. Given this is not in any sense an approved plan but rather a puff piece from some architectural firm perhaps the article could have made use of it?

who's gonna build it?

[corbettw]

Seriously, where is Mexico going to find the sheer number of skilled construction workers they'll need to build this thing? All of the good ones have already moved to the US and Canada.

The future is now!

[Bradmont]

"the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface intolerable..."

Old Idea: read Asimov's Caves of Steel

[victor50]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caves_of_Steel

Who writes these things?!

[Pope]

The Earthscraper, designed by BNKR Arquitectura, is the Skyscraper’s antagonist in the historic urban landscape of Mexico City where the latter is condemned and the preservation of the built environment is the paramount ambition. It preserves the iconic presence of the city square and the existing hierarchy of the buildings that surround it.

WTF?! My god, it sounds like a teenager who found his first thesaurus.

finished??

[M. Baranczak]

Can't wait until it's finished

I skimmed the article, and there's nothing there to suggest that anybody is actually trying to build this thing. This pyramid is vaporware.

Architects...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what you get when architects try to solve engineering problems. Sigh...

atmospherics

[pz]

I wonder how they're going to handle the atmospherics.

Plumbing, water, the other stuff, that's easy and well-understood. We already know how to pump liquid stuff to change its level by a thousand feet reliably, inside a building. CO2, however, is denser than air, and would tend to accumulate at the bottom. Sure there are plenty of potential answers, I just wonder if they've thought about it since it sounds like the design is not far from a large open hole.

The very bottom floors

[dougman]

FTA: "The very bottom floors of the Earthscraper are for all of the technical parts of the building."

Sounds like several of the offices I've had while working in IT over the years.
Reminds me Richmond's office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqqggfGRQQI

old, old, old, joke

[Thud457]

WTF?! My god, it sounds like a teenager who found his first thesaurus.

Ahhh, I remember well the first time my father took me nighttime hunting and I bagged my first onomasticon. It was a real beaut, weighing in at over three hundred pages.

You can count me out!

[Just Brew It!]

I sure don't want to be 60+ stories underground when the next magnitude 8 hits!

literally abusive!

[Gravis Zero]

promising to turn the modern high-rise, quite literally, on its head

literally? really, literally? -_-

Re:literally abusive!

[neminem]

Yes, literally. I literally hate it when people use "literally" as an all-purpose intensifier when it actually would literally mean "not literally" just as much as the next guy, but this seems apt: it *would* turn the the modern high-rise quite literally upside-down. I thought it was sort of clever. Unless you're objecting to the word "head" used to describe the tops of inanimate objects that don't literally have heads, but I would claim that "turn on its head" is a fairly common idiom.

Gonna need it for the fire, Umbrella Corporation

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Running down 65 floors is a pain in the arse. Running UP 65 floors to the surface is a whole other story!

There'll be people hoping a sewage line breaks before they have a heart attack running up stairs.

Stories like these come along every few years about underground building. And everyone says, "Gee, that's a good idea. Why aren't we doing that already?"

Then you tell them about fires, cave ins, flooding, etc. and that good idea doesn't look so hot anymore. Christ, has nobody watched Resident Evil? You don't need monsters, you just need to lose power, lights, and air ventilation and you'll be have a nice uphill riot on your hands. Those glass walls probably don't work to well on a cloudy day or night down near the bottom.

Let's just go ahead and name this the Umbrella Corporation building.

Re:Mexican engineering - Fire Safety

[quacking duck]

Leaving aside the physical exertion, it could be easier to evacuate a pyramid.

Traditional buildings have stair shafts straight up and down, so you bottleneck the closer you get to ground. With a pyramid, the "base" is always biggest at the surface level, so if designed properly you can add more escape stairways (along the sides) and shafts the closer to surface you are.

Expensive workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I enjoy such pioneering of new engineering solutions, this seems like an expensive workaround for a silly law. Why use a more difficult solution, when a cheaper solution is available which frees up resources for better purposes?

82,000 / 65

[Anonymous Coward]

Is only 1,262 sq. ft. a story. That's smaller than my apartment. Am i missing something? How many sq. ft. are in a normal 65 story building, or in, say, the Luxor?

I dare you

[SnarfQuest]

The Earthscraper concept begins with a glass roof replacing the opaque stone surface of the Zocalo preserving the open space and civic uses of the Zocalo,

I dare you to walk across the "transparent" roof to the center, where you can look down 65+ floors. Great place to have a monster truck rally!

Re:Mexican engineering - Fire Safety

[Anonymous Coward]

I also wouldn't want to see a fire in one of these. I suspect it's bad enough trying to climb down 60 floors in an emergency. Can you imagine trying to climb *up* 60 floors when the building is on fire?

Ask a New York Fireman.

Those Storage Buildings

[Deliveranc3]

With the sliding doors are becoming iconic.

People rent instead of buying homes, there's an increase in the pressure to have a sparse home and storage space is becoming increasingly expensive.

This was inevitable, I just wish I'd had the money to pull it off first.

What do you mean, rock?

[overshoot]

It's not volume which matters, it's surface area with the water table bearing rock which determins how much water is going to get in.

It's all alluvial silt. In a former lake bed. Most of it below the water table.

Re:What do you mean, rock?

[SuricouRaven]

Perhaps some form of impervious concrete lining? Cheap, and even if it can't stop all the water (The pressures with such a column of water would be an issues) it'll be able to reduce the flow significantly.

Arcologies

[Dachannien]

I've played enough Shadowrun to know where this is going.

Buoyancy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the water table there is right around eye level. I'm really shocked no one has mentioned the problem of buoyancy.

CO2...Radon...???

[stoicio]

I hope the power never goes off. The hole will fill up with CO2 and smother the deepest inhabitants.
Also, I hope there are no Lanthanide salt deposits near by. Radon gas is heavier that air.

Why fight gravity?

[TiggertheMad]

Caving in a giant inverted zigguart sounds like a lot of work. FLOODING a zigguart sounds much easier...

Accident Waiting to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think its a hot idea digging hole in the ground which has a glass roof or whatever it going to use.

There going be serious amount of clean on that translucent ceiling to keeps that light from becoming dull. What happens if that thing cracks or something? You'd have to replace each section every so often?

I'm no scientist or engineer, but i would think a structures like that would be highly vulnerable to any changes in surface. They had 8.0 earth quake back in 1985. If something happened like that, i would hate be down that hole. Ceiling panels could fall or trap a lots people down there. Least building on the surface can be made to shift in a quake, but i can't image what they could do keeps that place from rocking. Good luck with this.

Earthquake

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm.... What could possibly go wrong here...?

Re:Gonna need it for the fire, Umbrella Corporatio

[cthulhu11]

Am I the only one thinking of Cleopatra 2525?

I have thought of something similar 20 years ago

[WindBourne]

But, I was looking at several canyons in Colorado or Utah. Basically, it is already dug out. Simply cover it and then build inside. It still has the same advantages (much lower HVAC costs), but none of the disadvantages (needing to dig; worried about earthquakes; etc). This also has some interesting concepts. It allows you to build a self contained environment. At first that sounds bad, but it forces the locals to work on lowering their pollution and energy usage. In addition, it fights back against the sprawl that America suffers from. Basically, it would be to create a small town via a small canyon, then latter do another larger place to create a large town, and of course, keep moving up.