A Brief History of Early Hyper Tower

Fig.2 A brief history of early hyper towers (MVRDV, 2005)

Hyper Tower

A brief history of early hyper towers
A long history of architects’ practice for building an ideal city within one gigantic high rise structure, eventually leads to the appearance of the Hyper Tower. The history could be backtracked to the early 20th century, when Theodore Garrett advocated for “A mammoth structure, towering into the clouds and containing within its walls the cultural, commercial and industrial activities of a great city.” (Rem Koolhaas, 1978) After that, inspired by the prosperity of American skyscrapers, architects from different countries continually brought their similar or relevant proposals in the whole century. Finally, disregarding the place where the proposals are developed, they gradually improved into the conception of a hyper tower.

Three main types of early hyper towers
According to the chronology, three types of early hyper towers can be clarified. The first one was a single tower with various functional space vertically distributed. This was the primary type of hyper tower. The shortcoming of this tower is that when the enlargement in height and scale is needed, the traffic between different function zones becomes too heavy to be solvable. Hence when the height reached 1,000 meters or the accommodation exceeded 50,000 people, it would meet its application limits. The second one was a structure of pyramid. Opposite to the first one, it is an utmost stable structure. Theoretically this structure of pyramid could be infinitely enlarged without changing the shape, as elements could be added to each of its four surfaces symmetrically. This process of enlargement would form a series of concentric layers where different functions would be distributed on, which brings a conception of function layer. However pyramid occupies immense base area corresponding to its height, therefore, its scale would be confined by the terrain conditions. Later, appeared in the end of 20th century, inter-connected towers beaten the previous two types of tower with the highest density and complexity. Horizontal distribution of different function towers and the vertical function division in each tower coexist here, giving birth to a three dimensional city.

The Function Model

An explanation written in Dec. 2009

The Hyper Tower in 2090
“Hyper tower or vertical city is based on the concept that a city could have more space for open space or nature conservation at ground level if the city was expanded vertically rather than horizontally”. (MVRDV, 2005) It is an outcome of maximizing density on minimum land. Therefore, with no usable land for horizontal expansion, hyper tower is inevitable in new London. Furthermore, it evolved to be more self-sustainable and more isolated from external environment in a catastrophic environment. It is a structure with a nuclear power station in the center and a series of concentric function layers surrounded. The function layers include: residential layer, traffic layer and social layer. Near the core, the personal space for every inhabitant is provided in residential layer to ensure their basic living requirements. At the surrounding, working space, communication space, and entertainment space are set in social layer to meet their higher demands for social activities. And in between, the traffic system connects the residential and social layers together both vertically and horizontally. This sequence follows a natural rule in fruits, which keep the seeds of life in the core and the nutriments at the pulp. Also this arrangement distributes the sunshine and functional space efficiently. Retails, restaurants, and plazas obtained the most sufficient sunshine, because residents were expected to spend most of their daytime in this area. Contrarily, residential layer with living capsules exclusively, is fully adopted by artificial illumination, because residents were expected to stay in their personal room only in bed time. In short, it could be seen as a diversified first type tower or a compacted third type tower group, with concentric function layers which is similar with the ones in pyramid.

Hyper Tower in 2090

Built in a crisis, no time for rotation, distortion or spiraling, all returns to the nature of hyper tower: maximizing density on minimum land.

A Vertical City

80%completed by Feb. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Internal Structure
There was a popular mistake in city planning, especially in new town planning. Simple and static divisions were given to define a city in functional regions, however, the nature of a city is complicated and dynamic. Consequently this deviation caused anti-site defects in urban development, for instance, the dead city phenomenon of city central area and the traffic indigestion in commuting time. This unwise tradition in planning of horizontal city was also inherited in early design of vertical city. The first hyper tower proposed by Theodore Garrett was simply “divided vertically in four functional sectors with industry in the bottom, offices in the second quarter, living in the third and a hotel in the fourth.” (Rem Koolhaas, 1978) This similar flaw limited the development of vertical city as well. In contrast, hyper tower in 2090 is an open structure which is more agreed with the essence of city, a dynamic system. It mainly embodied in three aspects, more comprehensive function distribution in social layer, new separation in pedestrians and vehicles in traffic layer, and exchangeable dwelling capsule in residential layer.

Daily Social Module

80%completed by Feb. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Social Layer
Social activities are composed by office work activities, commercial activities and entertainment activities, and they also could be seen as large amounts of personal activities and small amount of collective activities. According to the latter, social layer is correspondingly composed by two parts, daily social modules which provide services for large amounts of personal activities, and four centers in terms of ecological centre, entertainment center, financial center and traffic center, which are set for different collective activities.

Daily social module
A daily social module is a large atrium with front side open to the external environment, and back side open to the traffic layer. The other two lateral sides are crowded with small offices, retail stores, cafes, restaurants, and clubs etc. which are connected by multi-level sidewalks. Walking bridges, plazas and small parks are set between them. This spatial pattern is inspired from the atrium space of gargantuan multilevel shopping complexes in Asian cities, which “bring public to ‘higher grounds’” and may be a new form of 3D city, as MVRDV group indicated in KM3. (MVRDV, 2005)

Four centers
Four centers are set on four corners of hyper tower. Ecological center is located at the south-facing corner, biological technology plants there use sunlight to break down parts of the human waste and compost for recycling back into the soil. Entertainment center is consisted of theatres, cinemas and a stadium. Financial center provides large office space for collective office work. And traffic center contains a multistory parking structure for personal aircrafts and a public port for both water traffic and air traffic

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.

Living Capsules and Corridors

Completed in Nov. 2009, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Residential Layer
The exhaustion of housing land led to the implementation of housing equalitarianism, in which rated housing space is equally distributed to every homeless citizen. Further, the urgency of providing houses to millions of refugee forces the rated housing space to be fully modularized as an industrial product. This conception of “capsule dwelling” was firstly proposed by Warren Chalk in 1964. He designed a capsule house with components which “would be tailored and able to be updated as technology moved forward, and as the dweller changed his needs.” And when “snugly and efficiently locked together they were capable of total inter-changeability.” (Archigram, 1994)

A dwelling machine
To be total inter-change, the residential layer is designed to be a dwelling machine, a huge transit system of the capsules with 400 floors. On each floor, 32 branches extend out from main structure. On every branch large mechanical conveyer belt is equipped, and on each conveyer belt 20 capsules are fixed. Freight elevators are used to load the capsules between conveyer belts, in a closed rail of loading cranes along the central structure. In the exchange system, the conveyer belt A carries capsule A’ to its inner end, detaches it and leaves it on a freight elevator, then the freight elevator transports it to floor B. After that, the loading crane on floor B picks capsule A’ up and carries it along the rail to the inner end of conveyer belt B. Finally, capsule A’ would be put at a vacancy on floor B. At the same time, along an inverse path, capsule B’ is transported to the initial location of capsule A’.

Capsules

60%completed by Apr. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Capsule dwelling
A capsule equipped with basic living facilities is the home for every inhabitant in hyper tower, which is 3m×3m×3m in volume. Although each resident can only occupy one capsule at one time, he/she can update the components in the capsule and change its location as his/her wish. When two people get married, they move and combine their capsules together and equip new components which are more suitable for family life. In the family, each child owns a capsule attached to the family capsule, which will be unattached when it grow up. People, shared social or family relationship, love to move their capsules together to enjoy their social life, and spontaneously form the local community.

Sunset at Oasis Bar

Completed in Aug. 2010, Using 3dmax and Photoshop

Conclusion

Because of global warming, the living space of human race has been sharply shrunken. In the last reserved land, the dusk of human civilization comes. Nonetheless in this period of decline, people still re-surveyed the changed world and re-established global production system. Supported by this system, on the ruins of old world, people re-built magnificent cities and mega architectures. These artificial spectacles are the beauties of the golden hour in human civilization history. In this golden hour, people indulge in the flourish of the past and enjoy the last peace before the dark night of barbarization falling again.


Bibliography
Archigram, 1994, Guide to Archigram 1961-74, London: Academy Editions

Mark Lynas, 2007, Six degrees: our future on a hotter planet, London: HarperCollins

MVRDV, 2005, KM3, Barcelona: Actar

MVRDV, 2006, Skycar city, a pre-emptive history, Barcelona, New York: Actar

Rem Koolhaas, 1978, Delirious New York, New York: Monacelli Press