Silicon Mountain.
A Mega-City for sale.
They say more and more people are going to live and work in megacities as the population grows. Megacities could be the best places to live in, however, they have many challenges: they are extremely complex systems, prone to failure, they are very leaky, they produce tons of waste, its streets are always traffic-clogged, it is polluted etc. It is time to reconsider how megacities should look like.
In a sense, we live in a two-dimensional world because we live on the surface of the globe. Cities provide some possibility to go to the third dimension with their skyscrapers. However, we cannot really move horizontally far enough in skyscrapers, so instead of going to 3D, in reality we are confined to a one-dimensional life of tall buildings.
So, the challenge is not only to design self-sufficient houses, but also to combine these houses in such a way so we have less house footprint and the resulting structure does not collapse.
Here is a new concept of a megacity — it is an artificial mountain of self-sustainable units. Due to its inherent shafts, you can move horizontally and vertically in this megacity. It can be built indefinitely high and potentially can be considered as a spaceport if built 20 km high and beyond. Consider it like a Tesla in the housing industry. If built, the mega city will be Silicon Mountain of high-tech caves.
You may find the structure beautiful, because it has exactly the same structure as diamond has. Due to this strong crystal lattice, the mega city would be a strong structure. On top of that, the building blocks are in the shape of a tetrahedron which is also considered to be a strong shape against buckling. The building blocks need to be 3D printed by welding of aluminium or steel alloys.
The tetrahedron is the building block (module) of the megacity, it is filled with one big and four small empty spheres. The module is essentially an elementary unit i.e. a house. The module is designed to be self-sustainable. It has a habitable semi-dome where you can feel yourself like in a yurt. Also, it has four smaller spheres and upside down semi-dome; enough space to put facilities to recycle organic waste and water in situ and grow food.
The energy problem can be solved by exploiting the potential energy of wind if the structure is built high enough.
Everything is nice and easy in theory but is this structure really livable in reality? Will it be convenient to live in this bizarre structure? We can try to to imagine how it is to live in this structure but we won’t be sure really until we build it. That is why I propose to build a minimum viable product — a small city, to see if it is worth to continue to build it.
Due to its high costs, the first houses of the mega city must be built for wealthy people, like Tesla did when it made expensive electric roadsters for rich people and then gradually started making more affordable versions of its cars. That is why I ask wealthy people to invest in this concept. You can buy one module for $1 mln. In total 90 modules need to be assembled to make a small city of 95m (312 feet) high. Why this height? The Statue of Liberty is 93 m high and if the structure will turned out to be not convenient to live in, it can be considered as… a Statue of Responsability. Why? Because the shape of the structure is the symbol for the responsability. And building large construction objects requires great deal of responsability because of safety.
The United States of America is the place for innovation and freedom. The Statue of Liberty being the symbol of the latter, the US must have the statue for innovation as well. Some people insist that along with the statue of Liberty, the US also must have the statue of Responsibility. I propose to build this small city of 90 modules and call it the statue of Responsibility or Innovation (or both) because it is not only a symbol but also a functional structure. And I ask wealthy people to consider investing in this concept of megacity, because there is no wealthy person who doesn’t know what is the price of responsability.
