Planet Hit By An Asteroid? Build A City In The Crater!
This article is more than 2 years old
With the impressive meteoric light show in Russia a few weeks back, the subject of asteroids, comets, and other things that might smack into our beloved blue planet has been the subject of much discussion of late. Even this week the United States congress has been grilling NASA about our ability to detect threatening near-Earth asteroids in time to try to prevent them from hitting us. (Short answer: we need more money.) But let’s assume for the moment that we are hit by a big one at some point, and let’s assume that it doesn’t totally wipe out our species. A group of Chinese architects have proposed a rather ingenious plan to make lemonade out of those space-rock-shaped lemons. If you’ve got a big-ass hole, why not build a city inside it?
The “Crater-Scaper” is the idea of architects Xiaomia Xiao, Lixiang Miao, Xinmin Li, and Minzhao Guo. The beehive-like buildings in the crater are individual towers, each with their roof open to the air. The interior of the cylindrical buildings would have housing, business space, etc. and the roofs would also house gardens. It’s all very green, in addition to looking appropriately futuristic and awesome.
The concept would also have a water-collection/treatment plant at the bottom of the crater, and presumably some means of keeping the whole damn thing from flooding. Either that or you’ll need to spend a little extra to make sure your crater apartment stays above the water line. Although if they made the apartments water-tight, just toss some colorful fish in there and boom: giant aquarium.
The art also envisions a more traditional cityscape having grown up around the crater city. I wonder where the real estate would be more expensive: in-crater or out?
You can read more about the amazing crater-city design over at eVolo.
