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

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.