London.October 1992.
A japanese man entered a government building near Chancery Lane,and made his way up to an office on the first floor.This was the london branch of UK’s Patent office.
You see,this man was there on behalf of japan’s,renowed Shimizu Corporation,a leading architectural and engineering firm, that was and is among the top in the world and he was there to apply for a patent.
Note,to secure their ideas globally it was neccesary to apply not just in japan.Now this particular patent,was for no ordinary idea.It was something grand ,something spectacular.
The idea was to build giant pyramids in the middle of some of the largest and busiest urban centres in the world,starting with Tokyo.These infrastructure would be so large,they could house entire cities.
But why?what was this for?
And who exactly is the Shimizu Corporation?
To understand this,we need to go back in time,back over 200years ago to the company’s inception.
Edo,1804.
A carpenter,Kisuke Shimizu,founded a company in the national’s capital.Of course,today the capital’s Tokyo,but back then it was Edo.
Now this small company would go on to build the western section of the famed Edo castle,part of the imperial palace,Japan’s first western-style hotel,Japan’s first bank and later on, japan’s first nuclear reactor.
The company lived through many important moments in japan’s history,including the arrival of US commodore mathew C.perry,who forced Japan to open up its borders,the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate,the rise of westernisation,the earthquakes,wars,bombings,the rapid economic development,the still-ongoing population decline,the Shimizu Corporation saw all that in thier time.
Now that last point however,is of particular interest,because Japan’s population has been declining since 2010,and is expected to drop by two thirds within the next hundred years.And this has been causing all sorts of problems for the country,problems that have been shared by almost all Japanese cities.
Expect for one.
Tokyo.
In fact Tokyo,now the world’s largest city,ironically has the opposite problem.It suffer from extreme overcrowding and overpopulation.At 37 million residents,the Greater tokyo is virtually the only place in japan to see sustained population growth.This is due to internal migration from other parts of the country.
The Shimizu Corporation,having been headquarters in Tokyo since the Edo Period,had witnessed this growth first hand and overpopulation had resulted in some increasingly worrying issues like Overcapacity,overpricing and just a general lack of space.Various solutions had been proposed over the years like moving the elderly or creating jobs outside of Tokyo,but Shimizu Corporation had something else in mind.
By this point,they had built up their company to be one of the elite architecural,engineering and general contracting firms in the world,with successful,large-scale construction projects under thier belt.Note recently,they’ve been known for futuristics megaproject proposals like floating cities,underwater cities,desert canals and space hotels.
So,with this level of ambition and innovation in mind,it wasn’t surprising to hear what happened one evening in 1982.
After a hard day’s work,a Shimizu engineer decided to head out to watch a movie.This movie was Blade Runner,Starring Harrison Ford,set in a dystopian future,where synthetic humans are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation,this,a cult classic.
Now during the opening scene,two huge futuristic pyramidal megastructure were shown representing the headquaters of the tyrell Corporation.
The Shimizu engineer was completely transfixed by this architectural marvel,and he was unable to get it out of his mind.
The next day he shared this with his engineering colleagues at the Shimizu Corporation and it thus became one of the main inspirations for their solution to Tokyo’s overpopulation problem,a giant pyramid that could hold an entire city’s population in one self-sufficient building .
Ten years later,they found themselves patenting this idea globally.
Of couse,this was a crazy idea,but it wasn’t the first time something like this had been done.
Egypt.Around 2500 BC.
A huge pyramid was constructed on the edge of the sahara desert,during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu .This was the great pyramid of Giza,and it was an architectural masterpiece.Having likely served as buriel chamber for khufu,it has withstood the test of time,being the only one of the Seven wonders of the world that has remained intact to this very day.
Sure,other pyramids had been built throughout history,but the one at Giza is the tallest of them all,and was even the tallest of all the man-made structure in the world for over 3800 years.Ofcourse,The great pyramid of Giza is dwarfed by many of the current metropolitan high- rises,but,if the Shimizu Corporation is able to get it’s way,the pyramid may rise again.
The Shimizu Mega-city Pyramid,designed to combat Tokyo’s overcrowding and overpopulation,would be so large it’d be over 14 times the height of giza, and 2.5 times that of the Burj Khalifa,currently the world’s tallest building though soon to be overtaken by the Jeddah tower.
This two kilometer-high structure would consist of eight levels,each 250 meters high ,and would house one million people.
Wait,but where exactly in Tokyo would you place this monstrosity?
Tokyo already overcrowded so it’s not like there’s room,the area covered would be the equivalent of 18 vatican cities.Fortunately,Shimizu had designed the pyramid to be built over suspect terrain like parkland,forests,rivers,and even large bodies of water,making it perfect for Tokyo Bay,really the only vacant real estate in the area.
36 piers made of special concrete would form the pyramid’s foundation,which would make this the first offshore city ever built.
Inside the building,the structure isn’t actually just one dense block of concrete,but rather an exposed network of megatrusses,suspended skyscrapers,accelerated walkways,inclined elevators and rapid transit system’s moving through hollow supports.
The bottom four levels would house commercial and residential spaces,while the top four would have facilities for research and leisure,which means you can pack your stuff,leave your home,travel afar,and then check into your hotel at your holiday destination.
All within the same building.
Ok,maybe this sounds awesome,but what about the pyramid’s effect on the environment?
Well,the mega city will be powered by renewable energy:solar,wind and algae.
Yes algae,otherwise known as pond scum,making use of the surrounding water’s.Since algae is able to break up water into hydrogen,with the help of sunlight,hydrogen fuel cells can be used to convert the chemical energy into electricity,which means the most technologically advanced city in humanity’s history will,in part,be powered by Pond Scum.
But what about waves? Ocean swells generated by high winds also contain an enormous amount of energy,which could perhaps be reigned in using specially-designed power generators,but for this reliability is an issue,because waves get big,really big,especially in Japan.
Generators can get wiped out,but even more concerning is,what happens when a giant pyramid decides to get in the way of a giant tsunami.
And what about earthquakes?
Japan sits on top seismically-active Pacific Ring of fire,which menas Tokyo isn’t exactly the best place to set up an,experimental architectural megaproject, housing the lives of one million inhabitants.
But on the othe hand if there’s one place that knows how to make building earthquakes and tsunami proof,it’s Japan.And the Shimizu Corporation is indeed well aware of the structural dangers,in fact,that’s why the Shimizu Mega-city Pyramid is a Pyramid.
The pyramid shape is the most stable design in structural engineering,which makes it particularly suitable for cities like Tokyo.And with the building not being enclosed,fully open to the elements,any impact from wind or water would be reduced.For typhoons in particular,it would be safer to just let the winds blow right through.
Now despite all that,the greatest danger to the pyramid is actually the pyramid itself,more specifically its own weight.
If one truss fails,well,there goes potentially the lives of one million people just like that.
In fact,the structure is so masive,so heavy,that it wouldn’t even be wise for Shimizu to attempt it’s construction.Yes,the design had been flawed from the start,because in order for pyramid to even hold itself up,a special material was required,one vastly lighter and a thousand times stronger than steel.And currently,that technology isn’t available.
But it will be available in the future,because advancements are already being made in the field,and it’s just matter of time.Of course there are also others issues to contend with,such as the propsed price tag,and wheather the easing of Tokyo’s overcrowding would even be significant enough,but the Shimizu Corporation has made clear that in considering all these potential issues,the proposed completion date of the project would be around the year 2110.
A city for the future.
Indeed quite a while away,yet unlike,say ,the X-seed 4000,another Tokyo megaproject by the rivaling Taisei Corporation,it appears to not just be a ploy to gain mainstream attention.Now if for whatever reason the pyramid fails to become a reality in tokyo,there are still other cities in the world with massive overcrowding problems that would benefit from this concept.
The Shimizu Corporation,after all,had always intended for this technology to be exported.Imagine a mega-city Pyramid in singapore,HongKong,Mumbai or Dhaka.
Life in the largest man-made structure in history would be like a world within a world,a condensed,exciting,more sophisticated version of the world.This confinement would,to an extent .lead inevitably to a certain level of autonomy within.
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