Virtical Buses

Completed in Dec. 2009, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Traffic Layer
“Since 1920s, architects began to locate pedestrian streets on different levels than motor roads.” (MVRDV, 2005) However, in a 3D city like hyper tower, the separation of pedestrians and vehicles is achieved in a new method. Every horizontal floor in the tower is designed as a pedestrian area, while motor traffic is only applied in vertical communication among floors.

Horizontal pedestrian traffic
A main floor is set every 9-meter height with accessory floors in every 3-meter. In each main floor, different traffic space is in respective scales. The aisles in residential area would be 3meters in height and 3meters in width, while the platform for vertical buses requires 27 meters height and 12 meters width. A pedestrian plaza even needs bigger and higher space. To fit the continual changes of space scale, staggered floors are adopted. They are connected by stairs, ramps and pedways, to form a comprehensive pedestrian system.

Vertical motor traffic
Vertical motor traffic is composed by two parts: vertical buses as global service and elevators as local service. Vertical buses run through the entire tower, stop every ten main floors. Complementarily elevators travel in-between every ten main floors, pause at the accessory floor.