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Megastructures
A megastructure (or macrostructure) is a very large artificial object, although the limits of precisely how large vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building. Some sources define a megastructure as an enormous self-supporting artificial construct. The products of megascale engineering or astroengineering are megastructures. Most megastructure designs could not be constructed with today's level of industrial technology. This makes their design examples of speculative (or exploratory) engineering. Those that could be constructed tend to qualify as megaprojects. Examples of megaprojects are the Zuiderzee Works in the Netherlands and Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the UAE. Megastructures are also an architectural concept popularized in the 1960s where a city could be encased in a single building, or a relatively small number of buildings interconnected. Such arcology concepts are popular in science fiction. Megastructures often play a part in the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archigram
Archigram was an avant-garde British architectural group whose unbuilt projects and media-savvy provocations "spawned the most influential architectural movement of the 1960's," according to Princeton Architectural Press study ''Archigram'' (1999). Neofuturistic, anti-heroic, and pro-consumerist, the group drew inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was expressed through hypothetical projects, i.e., its buildings were never built, although the group did produce what the architectural historian Charles Jencks called "a series of monumental objects (one hesitates in calling them buildings since most of them moved, grew, flew, walked, burrowed or just sank under the water." The works of Archigram had a neofuturistic slant, influenced by Antonio Sant'Elia's works. Buckminster Fuller and Yona Friedman were also important sources of inspiration. "Their attitude was closely tied to the technocratic ideology of the American designer Buckminster Fuller," ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megastructure (planning Concept)
Megastructure is an architectural and urban concept of the post-war, post-war era, which envisions a city or an urban form that could be encased in a massive single human-made structure or a relatively small number of interconnected structures. In a megastructural project, orders and hierarchies are created with large and permanent structures supporting small and transitional ones. According to John W. Cook and Heinrich Klotz, the lexical meaning of megastructure is an over-scaled, colossal, multi-unit architectural mass. The post-war megastructure movements led by avant-garde architectural groups such as Metabolism (architecture), Metabolists and Archigram regarded megastructure as an instrument to solve issues of urban disorder. Megastructure was once the dominant tendency in architecture of the 1960s, which resulted in numerous radical architectural proposals and a few built projects. History Urban antecedents The emergence of megastructural characters in built forms can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yona Friedman
Yona Friedman (5 June 1923 – 20 February 2020) was a Hungarian-born French architect, urban planner and designer. He was influential in the late 1950s and early 1960s, best known for his theory of "mobile architecture". In 2018, on his 95th birthday, he was awarded the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts. Early years Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1923, into an ethnic Jewish family, which posed him problems because of the anti-Semitic quota laws at universities, Friedman survived the Second World War by escaping the Nazi roundups of Jews, and he lived for about a decade in the city of Haifa in Israel before moving permanently to Paris in 1957. He became a French citizen in 1966. In 1956, at the Xth International Congress of Modern Architecture in Dubrovnik, his "Manifeste de l'architecture mobile" contributed to question definitely the daring will planning to architectural design and urbanism. It was during that conference, and thanks especially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantropa
Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa, was a Macro-engineering, gigantic engineering and colonisation idea that Germany, German architect Herman Sörgel devised in the 1920s, and promoted until his death in 1952. The proposal included several Hydroelectricity, hydroelectric dams at key points on the Mediterranean Sea, such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bosporus, to cause a sea level drop and land reclamation, reclaim land. Design The central feature of the Atlantropa proposal was to build a hydroelectricity, hydroelectric dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, which would have generated enormous amounts of hydroelectricity and would have led to the lowering of the surface of the Mediterranean Sea by as much as , opening up large new areas of land for settlement, such as in the Adriatic Sea. Four other major dams were also proposed: * Across the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea * Between Sicily and Tunisia to provide a roadway and to lower the inner Mediterranean fur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arcology
Arcology, a Blend word, portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology",. is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and Sustainable development, ecologically low-impact human habitats. The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no large-scale arcology has yet been built. The concept has been promoted by various science fiction writers. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle provided a detailed description of an arcology in their 1981 novel ''Oath of Fealty (novel), Oath of Fealty''. William Gibson popularized the term in his seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel ''Neuromancer'', where each corporation has its own self-contained city known as an arcology. More recently, authors such as Peter F. Hamilton, Peter Hami ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megascale Engineering
Megascale engineering (or macro-engineering) is a form of exploratory engineering concerned with the construction of structures on an enormous scale. Typically these structures are at least in length—in other words, at least one megameter, hence the name. Such large-scale structures are termed megastructures. In addition to large-scale structures, megascale engineering is also defined as including the transformation of entire planets into a human-habitable environment, a process known as terraforming or planetary engineering. This might also include transformation of the surface conditions, changes in the planetary orbit, and structures in orbit intended to modify the energy balance. Astroengineering is the extension of ''megascale engineering'' to megastructures on a stellar scale or larger, such as Dyson spheres, Ringworlds, and Alderson disks. Several megascale structure concepts such as Dyson spheres, Dyson swarms, and Matrioshka brains would likely be built upon sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astroengineering
Engineering on an astronomical scale, or astronomical engineering, ''i.e.'', engineering involving operations with whole astronomical objects (planets, stars, etc.), is a known theme in science fiction, as well as a matter of recent scientific research and exploratory engineering. On the Kardashev scale, Type II and Type III civilizations can harness energy on the required scale. Kardashev, Nikolai.On the Inevitability and the Possible Structures of Supercivilizations, The search for extraterrestrial life: Recent developments; Proceedings of the Symposium, Boston, MA, June 18–21, 1984 (A86-38126 17-88). Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985, p. 497–504. This can allow them to construct megastructures. Examples Exploratory engineering * Dyson spheres or Dyson swarm and similar constructs are hypothetical megastructures originally described by Freeman Dyson as a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to enclose a star completely and capture most or all of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloud Nine (tensegrity Sphere)
Cloud Nine is the name Buckminster Fuller gave to his proposed airborne habitats created from giant geodesic spheres, which might be made to levitate by slightly heating the air inside above the ambient temperature. Geodesic spheres become stronger (and relative to the volume enclosed, lighter) as they become bigger, because of how they distribute stress over their surfaces. As a sphere gets bigger, the volume it encloses grows much faster than the mass of the enclosing structure itself. Fuller suggested that the mass of a mile-wide geodesic sphere would be negligible compared to the mass of the air trapped within it. He suggested that if the air inside such a sphere were heated even by one degree higher than the ambient temperature of its surroundings, the sphere could become airborne. He calculated that such a balloon could lift a considerable mass, and hence that 'mini-cities' or airborne towns of thousands of people could be built in this way. A Cloud Nine could be tether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trans-Global Highway
A fixed link or fixed crossing is a permanent, unbroken road or railroad, rail connection across water that uses some combination of bridges, tunnels, and causeways and does not involve intermittent connections such as drawbridges or ferry, ferries. A bridge–tunnel combination is commonly used for major fixed links. This is a list of proposed and actual transport links between continents and to offshore islands. See also list of bridge–tunnels for another list of fixed links including links across rivers, bays and lakes. History Cosmopolitan Railway In 1890 William Gilpin (governor), William Gilpin first proposed to connect all the continents by land via the Cosmopolitan Railway. Significant elements of that proposal, such as the English Channel Tunnel, have been constructed since that era. However, the improvement of the global shipping industry and advent of international air travel has reduced the demand for many intercontinental land connections. Europe English Channel T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constant Nieuwenhuys
Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys (21 July 1920 – 1 August 2005), better known as Constant, was a Dutch painter, sculptor, graphic artist, author and musician. Early period Constant was born in Amsterdam on 21 July 1920 as the first son of Pieter Nieuwenhuijs and Maria Cornelissen. Their second son, Jan Nieuwenhuys, was born a year later. Both sons became artists although their parents had no apparent interest in art.Constant, une rétrospective, Musée Picasso Antibes, 2001 As a young child Constant drew passionately and showed great talent. He read literature with a special preference for poetry and played musical instruments. During his teenage years he learned to sing and to read music while in the church choir at the Ignatius Gymnasium, a prestigious Jesuit school in Amsterdam. In his later years, greatly inspired by gypsy style, gypsy music, he only played improvised music. He played guitar, violin and at 45 years of age also mastered playing the cimbalon.Trudy van der Horst, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tensegrity
Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression (physical), compression inside a network of continuous tension (mechanics), tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the Prestressed structure, prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially. Tensegrity structures are found in both nature and human-made objects: in the human body, the bones are held in compression while the connective tissues are held in tension, and the same principles have been applied to furniture and architectural design and beyond. The term was coined by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s as a portmanteau of "tensional integrity". Core concept Tensegrity is characterized by several foundational principles that define its unique properties: # Continuous tension: Fundamental to tensegrity, the tensi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strait Of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Europe from Africa. The two continents are separated by 7.7 nautical miles (14.2 kilometers, 8.9 miles) at its narrowest point. Ferries cross between the two continents every day in as little as 35 minutes. The Strait's depth ranges between . The strait lies in the territorial waters of Morocco, Spain, and the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, foreign vessels and aircraft have the freedom of navigation and overflight to cross the strait of Gibraltar transit passage, in case of continuous transit. Names and etymology The name comes from the Rock of Gibraltar, which in turn originates from the Arabic (meaning "Tariq's Mount"), named after Tariq ibn Ziyad. It is also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, the Gut (coastal geography), Gut of Gibraltar (although this is mostly archaic), the STROG (STRait Of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
