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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.'"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
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