Some of the World's Most Bizarre Construction Projects (Sideprojects Youtube channel)

I think it was in Red (possibly Green) Mars that Kim Stanley Robinson described a very 'economical' way of destroying a surface domed habitat. The life support system is hit with a virus so that it gradually raises the oxygen fraction and then an incendiary missile penetrates the membrane... Apollo 1 fire on a city scale. Tons of lunar rubble as radiation shielding that makes good armour? Not with the radiators having to be exposed to space - and if someone lobs a bucket of nails on a trajectory that passes through them, then thermal control is lost and the inside overheats beyond lethal levels. Then the self-replicating bots can gnaw through the rubble, just for fun. Call it 'salvage.' The point is that big single volumes are big, fragile, bullseyes.
 
easiest way to destroy a o'neill cylinder is to use giant robots to shoot poison gas into it, according to japanese documentary evidence

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rest in peace giant washing machine rack o7

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im a big fan of buildings that get wider as they get taller also

connect them together so you can build an airport on top and give shade to the citizens below

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star wars is when george lucas copies 1970s japanese architects ):
 
Rhinocrates said:
I have computers more powerful than any that existed in WWII, but they're not more powerful than anyone else's now.
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They don't need to be. Only greedy short sighted socialists really ulcerate over the fact that other people have better stuff than they do; the fact is, the stuff you have now is better than the best stuff the richest people had not that long ago.

Rhinocrates said:
time will be a commodity, there will be futures markets and bubbles (which tend to burst - look up 'South Seas Bubble'). One person's self-replicating robot is another person's claim-jumper, or pirate, or worse (see below).
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Indeed. But the universe is effectively infinite.

Rhinocrates said:
A few facts have become clear in recent decades: First, the bulk of commerce is now in virtual services, i.e. rent. Yanis Varoufakis has recently published an analysis of this shift. John Gray, coming from his own corner, likewise sees a shift to quasi-feudal rent-based power. My computers happen to be a good example of that. I can't buy a 'thing' called Word. Instead, Microsoft has figured out that they can keep charging me via subscription.
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Or you can buy a cheap knockoff competitor to Word.

Rhinocrates said:
Want to send a self-replicating bot to an asteroid so that you can live in splendid isolation? Sorry, that's asteroid's already part of someone's futures trust.
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The rules haven't been worked out yet. But it seems likely that whoever gets there AND homesteads it first gets it.

Rhinocrates said:
Moreover, self-replicating tech, like smallpox, is not something you want to let loose anyway.
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Depends on the self-replicating tech. Tech with specific functions, like robots that eat asteroids and crap out ingots of silicon and aluminum and whatever, along with occasionally one more identical robot, are quite safe. if you unleash them on an asteroids, they may eventually completely consume said asteroid and then what? There they are. Stuck. Because no idiot gave them long range propulsion systems. If someone sets one loose on a moon, you simply walk up to it and cap it in the processor.

Self replicating nanotech seems, so far, to be beyond the physically possible. Nanotech itself looks dubious at best; the surface area to mass ratio alone means that anything you make the bugs out of will be *instantly* either cooked or oxidized if not maintained in a fairly precise environment.

But smallpox? That, and much worse, is coming. I have little enough fear of nuclear terrorism. Stealing nukes is damned hard, and even if you did it'd be only a handful. But soon enough any depressed emo kid with grudges drilled into zir by zirs grudge-bearing teachers will have access to bio-processing replicators that will simply stamp out a virus with whatever gene sequence you want. Download smallpox off the net, or go that extra step and fire up that software from the dark web that processes the virus however you like. Airborne AIDS? Easy. Cancer-causing virus that targets specific physical features such as sex or ethnicity or height or hair color? Easy. A virus that wipes out not humans but all bacteria? Easy.

Humanity without space colonies is dooooooomed.
 
Kat Tsun said:
easiest way to destroy a o'neill cylinder is to use giant robots to shoot poison gas into it, according to japanese documentary evidence
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to put in context, he refers to Japanese Sci-fi francise GUNDAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam

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Nakagin Capsule Tower Building by architect Kisho Kurokawa.
Build 1970-1972 was brave experiment in Metabolism architecture.
The Idea was two support towers with lift, stairs, supply. were 140 capsule plug into the towers.
Planned was that every 25 years the building get renovation and new capsules installed.
in 2022 the run-down building was demolish

What Happen ?
Original it was planned for rent to bachelor Tōkyō salarymen.
by 1997 the tower became a residence, with ownership over capsules !
The attempts to renovate the Building failed for several reasons:

- The building had be clear and totally disassemble, what some residences refused to move out.
- Construction of new capsules: the company never mass produce them, making new one very expensive, again some residences refused.
- lack of funding, do economic crisis of 2000s

In mean time the Towers deteriorated since the repairs were never done.
November 2021, the building only houses 20 tenants. most of capsules were uninhabitable.
The tower was demolish in spring 2022. Some individual capsules were be preserved.

The Idea was good, but the architect no account the long time effects.
Next to that the Tower was not build for easy maintenance and simple plug-out plug-in of Capsules.
instead had all capsule too removed from Tower for that.

There was British architects group thought of that a easy to maintenance City
Their name ARCHIGRAM there plan: PLUG-IN CITY


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJpGe5rdz4
 
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Time to hit the ignore button, for the first and I hope the only time. A diversity of viewpoints is essential but I have no desire to create any excuse for someone practically indistinguishable from a fascist or a religious fanatic to blather about the need for racial purification so that the new Master Race can colonise the galaxy. I find even debating such ideas repulsive. I will not be dragged down by this.
 
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So, interesting thing about the capsule tower by Kisho Kurokawa, indeed Michael, it's representative of a movement called Metabolism, which held that buildings should not be static but grow and change throughout their lifetimes.

en.wikipedia.org

Metabolism (architecture) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Ironically, in Japan, land prices mean that the cost of building is very low compared to the land itself, so demolition and rebuilding is more economically viable. Thus, even this versatile, evolving building found itself outpaced. Despite protests, the tower was demolished and - further irony - exists now in the Metaverse.

www.archdaily.com

Gluon Preserves the Now-Dismantled Nakagin Capsule Tower Building in the Metaverse

Gluon plans to preserve in the metaverse the Nakagin Capsule Tower Building in Tokyo, one of the most representative examples of Metabolism.
www.archdaily.com www.archdaily.com

Maybe some version of the Metaverse will pick up in the future. I know someone who's still involved in Second Life.

This does highlight a Japanese attitude to history and building. In the 'West' (I live in the geographic 'South' and the 'East,' even if I'm culturally 'Western') we think preservation is about protecting the continuity of the material. It's scandalous if an historic building is demolished or altered. This is often to the frustration of users who want to update old buildings.

Even Norman Foster, the 'Pope' of high tech architecture found that his early work. The Willis Faber and Dumas HQ was meant to be flexible but it was declared an historic building, preventing the alteration that was a fundamental element of the design intention.

en.wikipedia.org

Willis Building, Ipswich - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

In contrast, the Japanese ethos is epitomised by the temple at Ise which is burned down every twenty years while an identical copy is built adjacent. The continuity is in the idea, not the material.

www.mutualart.com

Sacred Art: Transience and Continuity at the Grand Shrine of Ise

As opposed to Western traditions, Eastern culture does not obsess over permanence, thereby paradoxically creating lasting practices
www.mutualart.com www.mutualart.com
 
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One of the most remarkable buildings under construction today is the Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Antonio Gaudi, the architect, seems so strange and alien but he was embedded in radical movements of his time.

It's an amazing project and its extravagant form is in fact an expression of the same principles that underlay the gothic cathedrals. Today, advanced computer aided design in used to model the hyperboloid forms that Gaudi proposed. I say 'proposed' because while he created models and drawings, much was lost in the Spanish civil war (well after he died, too). What is being built now is the best interpretation on what he imagined.... and that is in the practical tradition of the gothic too, since often it took centuries to complete some cathedrals.

en.wikipedia.org

Sagrada Família - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

While we use computers now, Gaudi used analogue means. One of his most clever ideas was the realisation that tension is compression inverted, so he designed his buildings using models made of chains and weights hung upside-down to guide him in the design of buildings that were to be constructed in stone. A hanging catenoid in tension is the model for an arch in compression.

formfindinglab.wordpress.com

Sagrada Familia: the structure sometimes misunderstood

Incomplete but already a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Gaudí’s Sagrada Família towers over the city of Barcelona. Over a century in the making, the cathedral is expected to finish in the next 10-20 y…
formfindinglab.wordpress.com formfindinglab.wordpress.com

Dropping names here, Mark Burry, who's working on Sagrada Famila today, taught me. Nice guy. As a thoroughly impractical person, I actually did well in his classes. I had some great teachers, i have to say. It's a noble profession.



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Kat Tsun said:
easiest way to destroy a o'neill cylinder is to use giant robots to shoot poison gas into it, according to japanese documentary evidence

View attachment 711186

rest in peace giant washing machine rack o7

View attachment 711187

im a big fan of buildings that get wider as they get taller also

connect them together so you can build an airport on top and give shade to the citizens below

View attachment 711188

star wars is when george lucas copies 1970s japanese architects ):
Click to expand...
the trilogy of sci-fi books beginning with The Three Body Problem features a future (underground!) city of tree-like towers. We will probably see it in the upcoming Netflix series.
 
How grand projects can go wrong, with a good primer on engineering principles for building on a large scale (and why I'm irritated by fools who think that vaguely defined 'technology' is a magic wand that will fix any problem on its own).

Frank Lloyd Wright once said that doctors can bury their mistakes but all an architect can do is recommend that the client plant ivy. These are going to need a lot of ivy.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIOUg5TV5Uc&t=5s
 
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