Buildings are often build on the ground into the sky. Would it be conceivable if instead, we build down into the ground instead? We wouldn't have to worry about wind then. I think we could go farther down than up.
Could a world have this?
Buildings are often build on the ground into the sky. Would it be conceivable if instead, we build down into the ground instead? We wouldn't have to worry about wind then. I think we could go farther down than up.
Could a world have this?
Buoyancy is a problem.
The main issue with getting a building that deep is the water table. If you build something deep under the water table and want that thing to be full of air, it will really want to float. This is even a problem with recently buried coffins during floods.
So, if the building is being built where people typically live (that is there is water in range of wells), the buildings can not get very deep before they would simply pop out of the ground. This can be overcome, with engineering, by digging through bedrock (not that easy) you can anchor your building to keep it from floating up.
There are a lot of benefits:
But they don't overcome all the problems:
flooding can be a big problem
that's quite an understatement
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The Above Below project aims to take a disused mine in Arizona and convert it into a underground building. The terraces of the mine will be covered by a large domed roof, with some skylights and artificial lighting providing natural light. The building will be 900 feet (274 metre) tall deep and 300 acres (1.2 km²) in area.
Here are two views of the structure:
Here is a detail of the central inverted spire, which is more like what you've imagined:
The "building" must be exceptionally wide for structural stability, and the terraces are important so that there are ways to get up and out of it. Stacking floors vertically would also make for a rather dark "building". Using terraces means that no place inside the "building" is blocked from light.
Yes, they are called mines.
The TauTona Mine or Western Deep No.3 Shaft, is a gold mine in South Africa. At 3.9 kilometers (2.4 mi) deep it is currently home to the world's deepest mining operations rivaled only by Mponeng gold mine with which it competes for #1 ranking.
This goes more than twice as deep as the tallest building is high.
Whether anyone would want to live there with journeys of up to an hour to reach the surface, is another matter.
Yes.
But it has its own problems.
The sides will want to collapse in. You'll need to build walls to keep the ground up. An amazing irony since most walls keep buildings up.
Natural lighting will be terrible... there won't be any!
Drainage will be a problem. Especially if you dig down to the water-table.
Significant factor influencing "format" of building is what is natural for species which is supposed to inhabit it.
For example with humans, there are many actual biological limitations overlooked in daily life and each of them needs special dealing if going underground. Just name two:
sunshine
Although these CAN be supplied artifically, there is no natural thinking in human species to go underground. We naturally feel best at ground level, with home surrounded by nature area (e.g. garden, lake, sea, etc.). Most of people can easily verify it on themselves by imagining "where I would live if I had $100M". I doubt that popular answer will be "in dream appartment 25 floors underground".
Of course, in your world you can always stylise people living underground if
Yes. There are already very deep mines. There are also liveable military bunkers and even self sustained nuclear fallout shelters built under ground.
The main problem is that these buildings are More expensive per square meter of floor space than an above ground building. The reason being that before they can be constructed, the earth needs to be trucked away and dumped somewhere. You are not going to find enough land to dump all that dirt within 100 km radius of a major CBD. Notice that that in the examples above people are trying to build on top of an existing mine out in the wilderness somewhere, not build a high rise office building in the city.
In the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion Tokyo 3 is built on top of a "cave" (not the right term probably, it's bigger than the city).
When the enemies attack the city's skyscrapers retract underground, sticking out in the empty cave. There is artificial light (as bright as daylight) and the bottom of the cave is like a big garden (well, more like a forest).