Architects have been proposing quite interesting and impressive vertical city designs for decades. Sometimes creative fantasies are carried away so high that, ultimately, structures of unprecedented sizes are offered, 2-3 km in the direction of the clouds.
Of course, all these projects remain on paper, and it's not only the scale of the construction, but also the construction technologies that are proposed to be used in the construction of these giants and which simply do not yet exist.
However, in 2018, a special project of the vertical city was presented to the professional community.
It is assumed that this vertical city with its own transportation system, hanging gardens, parks, work and living quarters will accommodate 350 thousand people.
The structural mega-frame of the building consists of modules, each of which is a 16-20-storey support block with vertical cores located in the center with an interval of 60 m.
The architects proposed a spiral construction scheme, when individual building modules are connected by a regular hexagon, the corners of which are developed radially to the sides in the form of stepped structures, which provides additional lateral rigidity.
Promotional video:
So, what is the uniqueness of this project and why is it more real than hundreds of similar mega-structures that remain only on paper?
Firstly, the author of the project is Philip Nikandrov, one of the leading professionals in Russia specializing in especially large and unique high-rise buildings. Its main creations are: the Lakhta Center tower in St. Petersburg - the tallest skyscraper in Europe and the Evolution tower - probably the most unusual skyscraper in the Moscow City International Business Center.
Secondly, the construction of Project 1111 does not require any unique technology or special equipment. The author of the project and one of the members of Nikandrov's team, Ivan Mylnikov, told "Construction Russia" about this.
How and when was the idea of the project born?
Philip Nikandrov:
- The idea of a vertical city was born to me in 2017. And then they embodied it with Ivan and other colleagues.
A whole team headed by Philip Valerievich worked on the project. Ivan, can you briefly tell us what your task was and how long did the work last?
Ivan Mylnikov:
- I joined the development team about halfway through the process. All stages of concept creation took about two months. My task was to create a video with animation of the stages of tower construction in order to show the use of existing, very specific construction technologies as easily as possible.
What is the main difference between Project 1111?
Ivan Mylnikov:
- The main difference, to summarize, is the convincing realism of the building. There are a huge number of futuristic high-rise projects in which the authors operate with the technologies of the future, without paying, for obvious reasons, attention to detailing specific stages of construction. For example, the technologies of "green energy", albeit in embryo, are now gradually acquiring certain tangible forms that are accessible to understanding, while in construction they are only trying to find breakthrough things.
How much time and money may it take to build a vertical city?
Philip Nikandrov:
- If quickly, then a decade, but you can stretch it in time, while you don't need to wait for the end of the entire construction, you can start living and working in the already built blocks of the lower tiers.
Ivan Mylnikov:
- The question is very good, but I dare not give some even approximate figures. With regard to project 1111, a very approximate construction time can be calculated, in fact, equal to the construction of a multi-storey bridge in a spiral a couple of kilometers long, but here it already depends on the specific country, in China it would have been mastered in 8-10 years (almost from the ceiling).
Project 1111 is still a project of the future. How soon can this future come?
Philip Nikandrov:
- This question should be addressed to the Almighty, but if you wish and invest, you can already start building!
Ivan Mylnikov:
- In fact, any innovation, as a rule, is a successful combination of existing solutions in one area or another. In fact, all the components of the technology - bridge construction, casting of ceilings in matrix shapes, lifting them along ropes - have long been invented and are used in one form or another. How soon can this come? The question should rather be "How to achieve the conditions under which such a large-scale construction will be implemented?" and "Where are the conditions for the construction of a project of type 1111 already?"
Do I understand correctly that all the materials and technologies necessary for the construction of such a structure are available today?
Philip Nikandrov:
- Yes, and they are all trivial and standard, nothing unique, this is the trick of the idea.
Ivan Mylnikov:
- In theory, yes, today, in almost any country, there would be suitable economic conditions for such grandiose undertakings.
Indeed, it is difficult to say whether Project 1111 will be implemented in the near future. However, this mega-structure is much more likely to see the light of day, unlike most projects of vertical cities, which can be read about on the links below.