蛇城 Snake City

蛇城

 

Snake City

新的城市扩张是发生在中国的方式是在欧洲和北美，在那里城市街区被提出谁柱高耸在他们的各个块个人拥有的老工业国发展方式的城市的结果。有可能是一个更好的方式来设计城市的未来。在中国的城市发展是一个奇迹。从来没有在这样的速度增长巨大的城市。在过去，这种想法是异想天开，只是为了逗我建筑的想象，没有暗示，这将永远不会建造。现在，快速，大规模的发展正在发生在中国能够建立不同类型的城市在一个动态的方式。

The way the new urban expansion is happening in China is a result of the way cities developed in the old industrial countries of Europe and North America, where city blocks were owned by private individuals who raised towering columns on their individual blocks.  There may be a better way to design cities for the future.  Urban development in China is a marvel.  Never before have huge cities grown at such speed.   In the past, this ideas was fanciful, just to amuse my Architectural imagination, with no suggestion that it would ever be built.  Now, the rapid, large scale development that is happening in China makes it possible to build different sorts of cities in a dynamic way.

他们是摩天大楼的城市，建成一个城市的传统观念。这也许是有效的现有特大城市，如上海，但我建议它是城市设计的老式机型。中国已经移动到城市发展的一个新的，未来形式的能力。还存在另一种模式是尚未实现。

They are sky scraper cities, built to a traditional concept of a City.  This is perhaps valid for existing megacities such as Shanghai, but I suggest it is an old fashioned model of civic design.  China has the ability to move on to a new, futuristic form of Urban Development.  There is an alternative paradigm that is yet to be realised.

多年来，我一直想象我打电话给我的巨型建筑。当我离开学校我学建筑，但放弃了，因为当时流行在六十年代，经过四年半的时间。其中之一是在一个单一的建筑物一座城市，而是一个能够继续增长。如果从远处看，也许是飞机，它不会是一个很大的矩形尖顶，随机聚集在自然风景，因为我们看到现在到处。相反，我想象无尽的蛇形建筑，也许是30层楼高，并尽可能广泛的城市街区。它会在蛇的景观，下面的轮廓线。弯曲建筑物的稳定性远比直的更好。也许是龙是中国的一个更好的形象，除了龙往往跳来跳去，但蛇只线圈和幻灯片。

For years I have imagined what I call my Mega Buildings.  When I left school I studied Architecture but dropped out, as was fashionable in the sixties, after four and a half years.  One of them was for a city in a single building, but one that can continue growing.  If viewed from a distance, perhaps by plane, it would not be a lot of rectangular spires, clustered randomly over the landscape, as we see everywhere now.  Instead, I imagine an endless snake-like building, perhaps thirty stories high, and as wide as a city block.   It would snake over the landscape, following contour lines.  The stability of a curved building is vastly better than a straight one.  Perhaps a dragon is a better image for China, except that Dragons tend to jump around, but a snake just coils and slides.

Windows on the outside would not be the only sources of light and air.  I imagine within this city a Rapid Transit System and a High Way, running along it, like a spine in a living snake.  All the services and communication would similarly run along it, within it.  Separately, running through the building would be an open void, that varies in size and shape, is open to the exterior in some places, and provides an atrium for surrounding people on many levels, with vegetation. 

Such a building could keep growing, after starting in a small area.  As it progressed, it would keep building from its end.  As with most new and quickly growing cities, the first residents would be the people building it, who would move out for permanent residents and businesses as the building progressed and moved.  A lot of the construction could be mechanised.

Internally, the building would be largely self contained.  To some extent it would resemble an underground city, where people live and work completely indoors with no contact with the outside world.  However this Snake City would be different as it does have sides and a top.  Fibre Optics can bring natural light inside.  The great advantage is that it is impervious to weather, including the worst predictions for the future.  

The large anthills of central Australia have an inbuilt air-conditioning system within the interconnected, internal tunnels because of the differential temperature of the two sides.  Existing buildings, including sky scrapers cannot take advantage of this process because they are like columns, but a Snake City building could.

Starting for example at a coastal port, it would snake inland.  In time, with the development and success of this concept, the Snake City could split into different directions.  It would be perfect for sparsely inhabited and inhospitable regions.  It would also be a way of linking existing cities. Perhaps, with a growing population, the world will be covered by a network of linear cities.