Megastructure
A megastructure 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. The lower bound of megastructural engineering might be considered any structure that has any single dimension 1 megameter (1000 km) in length. 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 easily qualify as megaprojects. 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 oft ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Megastructure (planning Concept)
Megastructure is an architectural and urban concept of the post-war era, which envisions a city or an urban form that could be encased in a massive single man-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 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 be found in pre-industrial built forms ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Metabolist Movement
was a post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural Megastructure (planning concept), megastructures with those of organic biological growth. It had its first international exposure during Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne, CIAM's 1959 meeting and its ideas were tentatively tested by students from Kenzo Tange's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT studio. During the preparation for the 1960 Tokyo World Design Conference a group of young architects and designers, including Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa and Fumihiko Maki prepared the publication of the Metabolism manifesto. They were influenced by a wide variety of sources including Marxism, Marxist theories and biological processes. Their manifesto was a series of four essays entitled: Ocean City, Space City, Towards Group Form, and Material and Man, and it also included designs for vast cities that floated on the oceans and plug-in capsule towers that could incorporate organi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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. In 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 its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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". 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 escaping the Nazi roundups of Jews, and 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 to the youth of the Team 10, that "mobile architecture" was coined in the sense of "mobility of living." With the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cedric Price
Cedric Price FRIBA (11 September 1934 – 10 August 2003) was an English architect and influential teacher and writer on architecture. The son of an architect (A.G. Price, who worked with Harry Weedon), Price was born in Stone, Staffordshire and studied architecture at Cambridge University ( St John's College – graduating in 1955) and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where he encountered, and was influenced by, the modernist architect and urban planner Arthur Korn.Melvin J. 2003.Obituary: Cedric Price, Hugely creative architect ahead of his time in promoting themes of lifelong learning and brownfield regeneration. ''The Guardian'', 15 August 2003. From 1958 to 1964 he taught part-time at the AA and at the Council of Industrial Design. He later founded ''Polyark'', an architectural schools network. After graduating, Price worked briefly for Erno Goldfinger, Denys Lasdun, the partnership of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, and applied unsuccessfull ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Archigram
Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s that was neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects. Based at the Architectural Association in London, the main members of the group were Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and David Greene. Designer Theo Crosby was the "hidden hand" behind the group. He gave them coverage in ''Architectural Design'' magazine (where he was an editor from 1953–62), brought them to the attention of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, where, in 1963, they mounted an exhibition called ''Living City'', and in 1964 brought them into the Taylor Woodrow Design Group, which he headed, to take on experimental projects. The pamphlet ''Archigram I'' was printed in 1961 to proclaim their ideas. Committed to a 'high tech', light weight, infra-structural app ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rendezvous With Rama
''Rendezvous with Rama'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography. The concept was later extended with several sequels, written by Clarke and Gentry Lee. Plot After an asteroid falls in Northeast Italy on 11 September 2077, creating a major disaster, the government of Earth sets up the Spaceguard system as an early warning of arrivals from deep space. The "Rama" of the title is an alien starship weighing at least ten trillion tons, initially mistaken for an asteroid categorised as "31/439". It is detected by astronomers in the year 2131 while it is still outside the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hydroelectric Dam
Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and also more than nuclear power. Hydropower can provide large amounts of low-carbon electricity on demand, making it a key element for creating secure and clean electricity supply systems. A hydroelectric power station that has a dam and reservoir is a flexible source, since the amount of electricity produced can be increased or decreased in seconds or minutes in response to varying electricity demand. Once a hydroelectric complex is constructed, it produces no direct waste, and almost always emits considerably less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel-powered energy plants. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ifugao
Ifugao, officially the Province of Ifugao ( ilo, Probinsia ti Ifugao; tl, Lalawigan ng Ifugao), is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Lagawe and it borders Benguet to the west, Mountain Province to the north, Isabela to the east, and Nueva Vizcaya to the south. The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras and Banaue Rice Terraces are the main tourist attractions in the province. These terraces are believed to have been hand-carved into the mountains 2,000 years ago to plant rice. However, recent research by carbon dating suggests that they were built much later. In 1995, the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras were declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2008 and 2015, the ''Hudhud chants of the Ifugao'' and the ''Punnuk (Tugging rituals and games)'' were inscribed in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. Etymology Ifugao is named after the term ''i-pugo'' (''"i"'' rom/pe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Atlantropa
Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa, was a gigantic engineering and colonisation idea that was devised by the German architect Herman Sörgel in the 1920s, and promoted by him until his death in 1952. The project was devised to contain several hydroelectric dams in key points of the Mediterranean Sea, such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bosporus, to cause a sea level drop and create new land to settle. Design The central feature of the Atlantropa proposal was to build a 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 up to , opening up large new lands for settlement, such as in the Adriatic Sea. The project proposed four additional major dams as well: * Across the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea * Between Sicily and Tunisia to provide a roadway and lower the inner Mediterranean further * On the Congo River below its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Strait Of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar ( ar, مضيق جبل طارق, Maḍīq Jabal Ṭāriq; es, Estrecho de Gibraltar, Archaism, Archaic: Pillars of Hercules), also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa. The two continents are separated by of ocean at the Strait's narrowest point between Punta de Tarifa, Point Marroquí in Spain and Point Cires in Morocco. Ferries cross between the two continents every day in as little as 35 minutes. The Strait's depth ranges between which possibly interacted with the lower mean sea level of the last major glaciation 20,000 years ago when the level of the sea is believed to have been lower by . 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 navi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |