Jouni Valkonen <jounivalko...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There will be two options. First is a prefabrication that will come in > massive scale that everyone in the face of the Earth will notice it in > November 2012. Because Chinese are going to prefabricate and assemble the > world's tallest building that is to be completed in March 2013. > That is interesting! Many years ago Japanese architects working on plans for super-tall building concluded that the only way to build them in a reasonable amount of time would be to use robots and prefabricated parts. > Second option is just brute force 3D-printing of houses. This process will > suit well for two storey bungalows. So, we have serious problem in near > future. Do we want a mile high megacities where a single prefabricated > skyscraper will actually hold the whole city with full city infrastructure > or that everyone has afford to dirt cheap bungalows with huge environmental > footprint? > That depends on the location. In some places we want high density, and in other places low density. I would love to see mile-high prefabricated food factories. In the book, I assumed the highest building we can make is ~500 m, the height of the World Trade Center. I assumed that multi-story food factories would have a shorter distance between floors than buildings intended for human occupation. In other words, food would be grown on shelves about 1 m apart, so you can fit 400 or more in a 500 m building. Anyway, based on this, I figured that we could grow as many crops in an area the size of Greater New York City as we now grow in the entire U.S.A. If we can make building 1000 m tall, that would be even better. We would not actually cram all of the building in one location. I have in mind building them in or near every major city and town. We would not actually have to have building poke up 1000 m to do this. They might be 500 m below ground and 500 above. Most people in favor of this intend to use sunlight which means they would be above ground. I was thinking of using LED artificial illumination, like the Cosmoplant factories in Japan (which went bankrupt). Less extreme versions of this idea are shown here: http://www.verticalfarm.com/ - Jed
