Category: Architecture

This weekend I watched a Discovery Channel(from youtube) documentary about a huge pyramid that could be built in Tokyo. The pyramid would have the same volume as 55 Gizeh pyramids, and 750.000 people could live inside the structure. It’s an idea from Shimizu corporation that could solve some of the overpopulation we are suffering at Tokyo. It’s an utopia, but still I enjoy imagining the future.

In the first video you can see images from nowadays Tokyo and the place where the pyramid could be placed. Just next next to Odaiba.

In the second part they explain is more in detail some problems that occur when building pyramidal shaped buildings and how those problems could be solved using nanotubes.

Next video shows how robots could play a central role when building such a huge structure. It also introduces as in auto-constructing technologies, buildings that build themselves.

Fourth part finishes explaining self-constructing buildings and continues with transport systems inside the pyramid.They show real images from Yurikamome line, a train that is working without a human driver since some years ago in Tokyo.

While watching the last part we learn how the energy problem could be solved and how the pyramid would be safe against earthquakes and tsunamis.

CaRPe DieM sent me the videos, thx!

When you walk around Japanese cities you will soon realize how thin some of the buildings are. They use every little place they find to build new houses or buildings. Some of them are really really thin, here are some pictures I took in Tokyo:

In the middle there is a very little police station.

In Japan most of the people doesn’t live in condominiums, they prefer single-houses. Even though, there are some areas where there are lots of buildings that seem to be designed with the only purpose of keeping the maximum number of families without using too much space. The worst city in the world creating horrible huge buildings is Hong Kong, where the rich zone has incredible beautiful skycrapers but the poor suburbs are full of “architecture of density” (Click this link, the photos are impressive).

I took these photos at east-Tokyo: