Craig Robinson - Floating city structure

[Sphynx]

Been lurking for a while, thought that I'd join up for the contest.

I've decided to go for an old favorite of mine, a floating city structure - with naturally, the concentration being on the structure itself rather than individual buildings within the structure.

No sketches as yet, as Ive been struggling for a few days deciding with thumbnails to decide what architectural heritage I want this one to have. I've ultimately gone for a pyramid with surrounding wall - a legacy of three different contintents and therefore not really being fully attributable to any of three cultures that I'll be taking it from.

The ultimate structure will therefore be a central pontoon containing a framework and glass 45' pyramid. There are five subdivisions to the pinnacle, each 25m in height giving some good space in there for large galleries and halls, with the central area probably spanning several divisions anyway.

The 'wall' is a series of pontoons arranged in a circle, with each pontoon containing a sea-wall and external dociking area, with habitation floors on the inside of the wall, facing inwards towards the pyramid.

Between the two is a lagoon / marina environment containing floating pontoon habitation. Whether I actually decide to model the majority of this in the end is debatable, as I think that the focus here should be on the pyramid and wall to define the historical links.

Viewpoint: probably half way up the outer wall structure so that we can see a good arc of the wall, across into the pyramid and hopefully with the correct lighting some of the interior of the pyramid's halls. For that reason, I'm toying with a nocturnal scene, but we'll see.

Sketches in a few hours hopefully.

[TheAllusionist]

Sounds very interesting, looking forward to it and glad that you came out of lurker mode Could you give us your full name so we can rename your entry thread to meet the contest guidelines? Good luck!

P.S. Like the avatar

[Sphynx]

Oops - missed that used my handle by accident. Sorry. It's Craig Robinson.

[TheAllusionist]

No problem, that is what we are here for, fixed

[neha]

cool concept..waiting for your sketches

[pradipta]

Craig, nice concept. would be very interesting, such a massive structure. looking forward to the sketches...

[pBarrelas]

yeah, very interesting concept!! looking forward to see some concept sketches!!

[Sphynx]

Not any serious attempt to define th architecture, this is just a rough digital sketch done in Gimp to define an overall scale and allow me to work on the frame-work structure itself. The wall in the distance in no way reflects the true shape of the wall, as what you see here is a flat glass surface facing inwards. I've not added the interior of each segment (each of which represent 15' of the wall, just out of interest).

There are a few true-sketches that I want to do - namely one side f the pyramid, face on; a free-floating pontoon as I think that I may well link the central pyramid with the 'wall'; and a section of the wall itself. These however, will be pen and ink.

[pBarrelas]

Nice start mate, keep on!!

[Sphynx]

First sketch of the structures themselves. As the pyramid is going to be glass clad, but the pyramids themselves are sturdy stone, I thought that I'd try and get the sturdy feel at the same time as keeping the space open by over-engineering* the double-layer load bearing structure.

Each corner has a foot for a major double steel girder - the outer meeting at the pnnacle of the pyramid, the inner about 25 metres beneath. Both are connected by crossbeams, and are also the source of an underfloor structure around the exterior of the building (forming the 'wall') that will hopefully be the mainstay of the structural frame-work (inset, top-down view).

There will be a few more load bearing frames, especially at the entryways, but I'd like to keep the true interior as free of load-bearing structure as possible and have as much of the floor space suspended as I can - even of that means building an inner-pyramid structurally separate from the outer.

With the load-bearing structure pricipally transfered to the concrete feet, I've probably got some leeway to also recess the pyramid floor itself. As this is all on a concrete pontoon, I don't need to cater for sub-floors anyway.

Anyway, onto the sea wall...


* By this, take a look at the two 'dots' - they are two people to scale. I sketches this on A5, so they are probably even a little too large.