Mount Fuji's Tower of Doom Cousin
August 25, 2007 7:53 PM   Subscribe

The X-Seed 4000 is currently the Earth's tallest proposed structure. The project is currently on hold, due to a funding shortage^, but adventures in Arcology will probably continue.
posted by Burhanistan (47 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
posted by Poolio at 7:57 PM on August 25, 2007


Wouldn't the space elevator be the Earth's tallest proposed structure?

Or, how about I propose a building that is one foot taller than the current proposed tallest building... I win!
posted by smackfu at 7:59 PM on August 25, 2007


Will it house the Tyrell Corporation?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:00 PM on August 25, 2007 [3 favorites]


From the first link: Not only is it destined to be the tallest but also the largest self-sustaining structure.

Wow, I really like the design, and the self-sustaining aspect is great too. Interesting links, Burhanistan.
posted by amyms at 8:07 PM on August 25, 2007


Ever since SimCity 2000 I've wanted to visit a real life arcology. This is super awesome, even if it's not built. Please, please, please let it get built. Or something similar.
posted by Mister Cheese at 8:11 PM on August 25, 2007


The most interesting part is that it is designed to house one million people. They could stuff the state of New Hampshire in that bitch!
posted by SassHat at 8:29 PM on August 25, 2007


They could stuff the state of New Hampshire in that bitch!

They'll need help from NASCAR and some formerly prominent hair-metal band along with a discount airline if that's the goal.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:37 PM on August 25, 2007


Hello Terrorist target! Goodbye civil liberties! If the architects have their way, the terrorists have already won! The only safe future is a decentralized agrarian society ala Jefferson. Peace through ignorance! Love through hate! Black through white!

</tinfoilhat>
posted by blue_beetle at 8:39 PM on August 25, 2007


It's ominous looking. Almost as ominous as a 13,000 feet Hello Kitty with animatronic moving arms.
posted by disgruntled at 8:39 PM on August 25, 2007


I don't see how this beats a bunch of smaller but very tall buildings spread out over the same area.
posted by Brian B. at 8:42 PM on August 25, 2007


Somebody thought of something cool to put on their blog. Giant building, hello!
posted by poppo at 8:53 PM on August 25, 2007


This sounds appalling from an engineering perspective. Can you imagine trying to repair your balcony, 8,000 feet off the ground? Whatever building material they use will rust, crack, or otherwise break down over time, architecture will date, and having everything built into this giant monolithic structure multiplies the pain in the ass factor a hundredfold. Eugh.
posted by anthill at 8:54 PM on August 25, 2007 [1 favorite]


It's almost as if they've made the conscious decision to turn their future into Anime-World. "X-Seed 4000: Glorious Mechanized Trooper" or something like that.
posted by Avenger at 8:56 PM on August 25, 2007


Are you kidding? You'd have to fill the bulk of the building with elevators, dramatically reducing floorspace. Plus, it will take what, five or ten minutes to get from the lobby to your floor? And who's going to be crazy enough to want to work that high off the ground? The whole thing must sway like crazy every time there's a stiff wind. And for what? So we can build another huge, inhuman, authoritarian structure? Yessiree, any way you cut it, this Empire State Building thing is just a bad idea.
posted by phooky at 9:06 PM on August 25, 2007 [9 favorites]


Taller than Mt. Fuji, oh yeah.

Osama salivates.
posted by caddis at 9:13 PM on August 25, 2007


While the pictures look awesome, I don't see how a 13,000 foot tall, million person building in an earthquake-prone country with a declining population ends well.
posted by thrako at 9:15 PM on August 25, 2007 [2 favorites]


Isn't the normal Japanese futuristic mega-structure built underground?
posted by smackfu at 9:17 PM on August 25, 2007


Not even Godzilla can stomp that baby.
posted by caddis at 9:22 PM on August 25, 2007


No but really, why is it called The X-Seed 4000?
posted by Shakeer at 9:23 PM on August 25, 2007


See, I want to see it go the other way, tall is cool. Deep is cooler.

Literally. By going down, and using the ground as an insulator, you hugely cut down the costs of climate control, and are no longer affected by mundane but critical things like the wind.

And if in the future, you need to expand, you can dig deeper, or stretch horizontally.

Of course, I don't think you can do this in Japan (could you?), but I'm sure there are places where it would be feasible.
posted by quin at 9:36 PM on August 25, 2007


Something needs to start being the future. We've been denied our personal jetpacks, or flying cars, and our robot police force. Might as well be this.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:41 PM on August 25, 2007


Would you get a bloody nose going up in the elevator? Would you need oxygen if you lived in the penthouse?
posted by samsaunt at 9:41 PM on August 25, 2007


The last time Earth's inhabitants were stuffed into mountain-like objects, some guy named Xenu dropped a bunch of nukes in them. Speaking of which, X-Seed Four Thousand is an anagram of Xenu Shouts For Dead. Coincidence? Enjoy your giant thetan grave, suckers.
posted by Krrrlson at 9:54 PM on August 25, 2007 [10 favorites]


Something needs to start being the future.

Space tourism is coming soon. That isn't good enough for you?
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 9:56 PM on August 25, 2007


No but really, why is it called The X-Seed 4000?

4000 meters; exceed, or so it seems.

If so, it says a lot about dangling national pride in order to finance it. Dollar for dollar, if they want a giant city they should design a standardized modular concept that doesn't try to be anything but super efficient as it sprawls in every direction. A giant cubic honeycomb structure assembled from replaceable girders is best for stability and volume, including interior elevated roads and elevated parks.
posted by Brian B. at 10:01 PM on August 25, 2007


anthill, and Brian B. have good points. The trouble with an Arcology in one building is age! Small individual buildings can be easily replaced, but to repair or replace something this huge? It is almost like building a huge city on a mountain - except, building the mountain too.

Despite the socio-cultural problems that I mentioned, what makes life fun is breaking the rules, I would vote with dollars have one of these built.
posted by niccolo at 10:26 PM on August 25, 2007


No giant dome? Lame.
posted by brundlefly at 10:28 PM on August 25, 2007 [1 favorite]


If anything like this ever gets built, I'd move there in a second. OF course I'd probably be an old geezer by the time it was completed, but I'd live on top of the world in my twilight years.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:02 PM on August 25, 2007


Paolo Soleri was a nut. Interesting guy, but crazy.
posted by spiderwire at 11:03 PM on August 25, 2007


900 Billion dollars divided by 1 Million inhabitants is an average price of $900,000 per inhabitant, which actually sounds kind of ok, given that there will almost certainly be office space, schools, malls and prefecture/city services as well.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:11 PM on August 25, 2007


I'm going to vote with my dollar for the first floating geodesic dome city. I want to live in the sky, and rain my garbage and excrement down on the hoi polloi.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:13 PM on August 25, 2007


If they build enough of these, will they launch into outer space?
posted by SansPoint at 11:24 PM on August 25, 2007 [1 favorite]


Climbing up the side of the building would be thrilling, but skateboarding down would be more so.
posted by Tube at 12:28 AM on August 26, 2007


Turn it upside-down and you've almost got Tiphares from Battle Angel Alita.
posted by redteam at 12:36 AM on August 26, 2007


I just want to mention the cap cost of this monstrosity is just about equivalent to the expense the present and future US taxpayer base incurred to "liberate" Iraq.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:01 AM on August 26, 2007


Piano delivery to floor 6.02*10^23, kthx.
posted by kid ichorous at 1:05 AM on August 26, 2007 [2 favorites]


Funding shortage, eh? Genom Corporation is good for it.
posted by Kikkoman at 2:37 AM on August 26, 2007


Given the shape of the structure:
- getting hit by planes should pose zero danger to the integrity of the structure as a whole
- swaying is probably minimal

As far as elevators go: it is intended to be more vertical town than building. On each of the larger "floors" (I count 8 of them) -- which have substantial outdoor/recreational space -- normal sized apartment building are built. Leaving the structure would be like driving out of town, or going to another neighbourhood in your city.
posted by lastobelus at 3:03 AM on August 26, 2007


This is very much a giant, mixed use, self-sustaining civil structure. And NOT AT ALL is it a huge spacecraft being built with its giant rocket engines buried beneath the ground and the secret purpose of repopulating another planet with a nucleus of human life when this planet faces sudden apocalypse. The X-Seed. Nope. No sir.

(There will be... an Exodus-Craft gap!)
posted by damo at 3:33 AM on August 26, 2007 [2 favorites]


phooky writes "Plus, it will take what, five or ten minutes to get from the lobby to your floor?"

Your other arguments are good, but this one...not so much.

The advantage of building in 3 dimensions is that you can fit 3 times as many people at the same distance from any point. This means that 3 times as many people can live X minutes away from a place as currently. Since this holds a million people, odds are you'd work somewhere in the place. A 10 minute trip to work would be absolute heaven, not an imposition. Much better than the far more typical 1 hour to 1.5 hour commute times.

That said, yeah, there are a billion other bad things about this project. Reduced commute time just doesn't happen to be one of them.
posted by Bugbread at 6:20 AM on August 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


I just want to mention the cap cost of this monstrosity is just about equivalent to the expense the present and future US taxpayer base incurred to "liberate" Iraq.

I have converted to the argument that we desperately need national health care as a social burden in order to prevent lobbyist wars and toxic waste. Whatever good it does us for palliative care is secondary. The reasoning is that it will seek its funding by taxing effects that cause bodily harm and the government will finally see war and waste as a healthcare issue before the fact.
posted by Brian B. at 9:41 AM on August 26, 2007


That said, yeah, there are a billion other bad things about this project. Reduced commute time just doesn't happen to be one of them.

I think populist aesthetics is dictating the engineering here. Horizontal mass travel makes more sense. Besides contruction costs in supporting the vertical weight (and making an enemy of gravity during an emergency), if the electricity fails, people can walk easier, or ride a bike, and carry more weight. Assuming this, the structure should be very long and interconnected to others, while supported on the ground. The greatest benefit is being able to contruct new rails above the ground that connect to existing ones outside of the city. The other reason is that these living structures can be built on top of existing roads on the edge of cities, without claiming more farmland. The challenge was always to provide natural light and air and views to inhabitants in massive structures, and this begs for a narrower design.
posted by Brian B. at 10:09 AM on August 26, 2007


Hello Terrorist target! Goodbye civil liberties! If the architects have their way, the terrorists have already won! The only safe future is a decentralized agrarian society ala Jefferson. Peace through ignorance! Love through hate! Black through white!

[/tinfoilhat]


Wait, what the fuck? Who is suggesting this? Where was this argument brought up in any of the links? Are you just employing some kind of insane internet double-reverse-sarcasm? I don't think any credible person is suggesting what you're apparently ridiculing.

And the X-Seed is not going to happen. If it ever did, I would laugh and laugh and laugh. At Japan.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 3:31 PM on August 26, 2007


Yeah, that was internet double-reverse-sarcasm.
posted by Bugbread at 3:32 PM on August 26, 2007


God dammit, I hate internet sarcasm. It never fucking works.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 3:41 PM on August 26, 2007


Or maybe you were just being sarcastic, bugbread? See, you can never fucking tell on the internet. God I'm gonna go get drunk now.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 3:41 PM on August 26, 2007


Thanks, I'd almost forgotten I'd planned to read The Night Land.
posted by Eideteker at 10:39 PM on August 26, 2007


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