This is a negative temple design and it makes sense since Mexicans like sacrificing kids and random people this design is that of the black negative temple that holds the worst evil entity in existence known to Indian culture for years stay out of Mexico folks
Allowing free access to the "roof" of this thing means people down there will definitely NOT get maximized sunlight, as the top will be constantly flooded with tourists.
Just make it property of the building for only residents. If they can come up with this and theoretically make it work, the problems we make up are minor ones.
"Building it down into the ground has natural thermic insulation" yeah dude, but the ground gets warmer, not colder the deeper you go. 3°C+ per 100 meters down Imagine living at the bottom, where is 9 degrees hotter than on top, there is only sunlight for 3 hours a day (during summer only) and if the foundation cracks, water with shoot into the hole with 100 bar pressure this thing would be amazing as an abandoned project taken over by gangs in the next cyberpunk game
Exactly this. Dangerous mega-projects like this can only be viable with godlike safety measures. Like there needs to be an outer shell surrounding the groundscraper, and an empty pocket between the outer shell and the actual building (so an earthquake doesn't drown tens of thousands of people). It needs backup systems for backup systems, multiple tunnels to ensure evacuation is always possible, special lights on lower levels for vitamin deficiency due to lack of sunlight, an insanely impressive air filtration system to offset disease from a shared air supply, a dedicated team of engineers always watching over all these things, a dedicated emergency room in a convenient place etc... Think some random capitalist is gonna triple his construction costs to create this thing properly? Fat chance.
@@TheAlexRhodes It's genuinely amazing that it's more dangerous to build down into solid rock than to build towering skyscrapers that sway in the wind.
@@PumpkinHoard Yeah, though most of the problems come from the number of people, undergound shelters are quite comfy when a small group has it all to itself.
Idk if someone's mentioned it already, but I believe the video would benefit noticeably if the background music were at a lower volume, making your voice easier to hear.
It wasn't addressed good enough. A single failure point would quickly fill up the entire volume with water. How do you detect if a bad actor is drilling a hole somewhere?
While in some countries the entire water pressure in the pipes is handled by gravity alone, without using any pumps, here all the wastewater has to be painstakingly pumped up. It's an absolutely dogshit concept. Just imagine if the pump fails, good luck being on the lower floors.
You're mentioning something that is a neutral point though. Skyscrapers have to pump water up but sewage goes down with gravity. Earthscrapers are the reverse with sewage up and water going down. Only real difference between the two is that Earthscrapers would likely need sump pumps to deal with ground water seeping in and fires are a much greater threat to those in an Earthscraper.
Wow, the quality of the animations in this video is off the charts and the narration is really clear and well done too. Instant subscription! Keep up the good work and great video quality and you'll go far with your channel
This is one of those ideas (like hyperloop) that would make a lot more sense on a completely different planet with different challenges and conditions.
The concept of making a downwards building really "tall" is very weird for multiple reasons. 1) Windows! No matter how big of a window up top you will make, the building will steel feel like a deep pit, you will feel like you're at the bottom of a well, just the top "mega window" won't be enough light. 2) Water! If any extra water from a flood or a broken pipe has to go somewhere, it will likely go literally drowning bottom residents, considering the funnel shape of the building. 3) Dirt is harder than Air! That's right, unlike with scyscrapers - if you want to build a downwards building you'll have to dig and also dump somewhere TONS of dirt, rock, whatever other inconveniences you may find. 4) Service paths! For a deep building you will have to dig much deeper and all around it to lay down electric cables and water pipes. 5) Light! Continuing the problem with windows and VERY limited sunlight as you go deeper down the building, the eletricity consumption will rise by a lot. 6) Ventilation! You'll have to use even more electricity and dig even more dirt to constantly force the air down to the bottom of the building. A real engineer will probably spot ten more problems with this that I'm too lazy or incapable of finding. Architects seemingly always manage to come up with the most impractical and atrociously complicated ideas that they *want* to work, doesn't mean they do work.
Tbh the only relevance this concept has here is the last sentence, because all the previous points are intuitively assumed, but the last sentence is a straight up true prediction that'll be funny as hell, bc architects get so proud when their ideas work Also, "doesn't mean the do work," well yeah, but doesn't mean they don't, which is the only interesting part of architecture in general
@@IsakLevanaWhat does it mean for a design like this to ‘work’? I don’t think anybody thinks a structure like this is impossible to build; there just isn’t any good reason to take on so many extra design and engineering challenges unless you live in a world where buildings need to be kaiju-proofed or something.
I mean if the concept was just a little more lateral than vertical, this could be possible for shops and walkways like in some major cities. As for building homes I doubt anyone would want to live there.
@@radicalfishstickstm8563 This very true and was my first thought as well. If they had gone for something more reasonable, like maybe house 1,000 people in a building 10 storeys deep? Make it more oblong (rather than a square) to better capture sunlight? That would be way more reasonable then this absurd idea of 100,000.
There's a place in China that had an underground mall/plaza. There was a huge flood and the entire level was underwater. Now imagine 10 levels down and it's not just your business, it's your home.
sounds like building a skyscraper, but you have to remove a small mountain of material before you start building. Plus dense smog will drift right down.
@@michaelsurratt1864I would change the regulation to be you can’t build that high around a certain number of blocks of the historic buildings. Due to very real concerns of disaster causing them to damage the historical properties. But farther away? Go for it, safely of course. It would also diversify the skyline based on where history is at.
@@C3l3bi1 no I'm saying the regulation that you can't build over however many stories high is stupid. I mean the building is stupid as well but it's only designed because they're not allowed to go up.
Underground office blocks was something I was surprised hadn't been done sooner when I was a kid. Eventually I realised it was because of earthquakes and it's much easier to lower someone in danger out of a skyscraper than raise them out of an earthscraper.
@@MarcusAsethropes exist. With gravity you only need a way to slow how fast you fall going down. Going up you need to spend a bunch of energy to fight against gravity which is very dangerous in situations like fires were moving upward is most dangerous
Yes, now we can go to work in an actual giant pit of despair instead of a figurative one. Imagine how laxadaisical things will be when it's that far out of sight. Who will go down to investigate maintenance and other issues? You know the boss's office won't be at the bottom. Also, see the meme about "The children yern for the mines." as I feel it's applicable.
One way mirrors and reflective surfaces around the sides of the hole could be used to get sunlight down towards lower levels. but it would never be like being above ground
@@slav4335I think he means like the idea of the Japanese depthscraper at 2:57, a giant mirror that reflects it downwards indiscriminately Presumably itd have to be deliberately made more convex than concave just for the best chance at avoiding any one focused point of reflected light; but that doesn't change the fact that a big mirror used to avoid focusing light would be massive and butt ugly in the imagined skyline of the Mexico City earthscraper
3 cents before I watch: there are many benefits to an earthscraper: 1. With proper ventilation, an earthscraper can be built deeper than a skyscraper can be built tall 2. Because of more support, a ln earthscraper can be much wider than a skyscraper of equal height 3. The engineers can almost wholly ignore wind 4. The materials obtained while excavating the foundation can be used in the project or sold to help fund it 5. An earthscraper is more visually flattering and that dimension of architectural art hasn't been explored Drawbacks: 1. Potential disruption of the regions water table 2. Skyscrapers are a technology and art form that has been pursued, researched, and accomodated for for 200 years. The infrastructure and jobs for creating them already exists en masse, so replacing or even supplementing them with earthscrapers going forward would be very hard, especially since the markets dont like change, even if it proves profitable. Joke benefits 1. You can pretend you live on Utapau 2. Can you imagine how hard 9/11 would have been to pull of if the wtc was underground?
although video games are seldom a good source for information, broken clocks are right twice a day et cetera. This all reminds me of Rapture from Bioshock: "Build it like a tub or it will become a sewer." Drainage is a huge issue when your structures are extending *beneath* the water table. The entire thing will have to be a watertight vessel. Like a boat embedded in the earth. In order to make drainage even basically possible, you will likely need to dig out cisterns to rapidly drain off sudden inflow. The cistern would be a sort of buffer to prevent runoff from backing up. The cistern would also necessarily have specialized dedicated fluid purging machinery - massive pumps for pushing the truly gargantuan quantities of water out to make room for more. This is all going to add a great deal to the cost of operation, just in terms of maintenance alone, without even considering the energy costs for when the system needs to RUN. Towers are, for better or for worse, better disposed for ventilation and drainage. Also, excavation is astonishingly expensive, far more so than construction. There's a reason we don't bore tunnels everywhere.
subterranean buildings and tunnels are expensive, like energy/defense r&d labs. or military installations. subterranean real estate is not for civilians, i'd wager "we" do have quite a few tunnels everywhere. There is little information why the Japanese didn't go through with their groundscraper. They probably did, to a degree. They are making the AI robot army in there. Nothing empirical on my end, just hunches and creative thinking.
@@unclepaulie4233 well there are several damn good reasons for japan to *never* build such a thing: 1. it's tectonically active. alleged rhetoric about "sometimes tunnels are even safer in an earth quake" aside, even IF it were less likely to sustain critical structural damage from an earthquake or geothermal eruption of some kind, if it DID it would be utterly catastrophic. Building collapses suck, but can you imagine if a residential groundscraper CAVED IN? The humanitarian crisis of it? you can't just dig it out willy nilly, further disturbing it would very likely cause the cave-in to settle FURTHER and kill even more people who were trapped. On the surface, you can approach such disasters from many angles and perform the careful extrication of survivors with a lot less complication. 2. the whole nation is an island. yes there are some areas quite a bit above sea level but its biggest urban center is on a bay AND encounters tsunamis, coastal flooding, and monsoons regularly. Tokyo, for further instance, required a massive cistern system that inspired the cisterns level in the original Mirror's Edge game. 3. who's it even gonna be for? population numbers are crashing *precipitously* in japan right now, even if it weren't for civil residency, staffing any kind of industrial, commercial, scientific, or military facility of this kind would be much more economical if one were to simply bulldoze much of the abandoned surface structures and rebuild something where they once stood. you know where an 'earthscraper' might actually make sense, though? ironically enough... the moon. You'd be hard pressed to find a better protection from solar and interstellar cosmic radiation than several (to several hundred) meters of lunar regolith surrounding you on all sides. there is no liquid water table, furthermore; any water on (or in) Luna is gonna be frozen solid. In areas that we might build habitats, any HVAC/environmental systems we are using to make it a comfortable temperature will not thermally penetrate the regolith more than a couple meters tops. but at that point we'll be eschewing natural light entirely because outside of an atmosphere ten miles thick "THE SUN IS A DEADLY LASER". If anything, earth--that is to say, MOONscrapers are a far better habitation option for humans on the moon than any over-the-surface structure.
I can already guess this cistern should likely be the volume of the pit-scraper itself, and it will get drawn up at some slightly more reasonable total volume, and then engineers on location will shrink it further, and then builders will shrink it even further....
I understand that it is very typical, when presenting topics like this, to brush over the major challenges involved, but I'm still kinda disappointed. The problems mentioned aren't quantified at all, not all important problems are brought up (that's a lot of dirt you have to haul, and the bottom of the hole is probably rock which would require blasting), and potential solutions are not discussed.
@@Eggplanter_2027I think this might be possible to be built on an valley. You go down but basically still on the ground at the same time (just different ground level.) Basically like a skyscrapper that's fused into the side of a cliff.
@@davidsentanu7836 Ah, a valley, where flooding is even more of a threat because rain that lands on the adjacent slopes is _also_ your problem. I shudder to imagine a landslide or mudslide near one of these things. It'd be literally inescapable.
As an urban planner, if you put five seconds of thought into this it falls apart. Excavating all that would cost far, far more than just erecting a metal spine and putting stone and glass around it. If ANYTHING goes wrong, everyone dies. I cannot imagine how devastating an earthquake or flooding would be compared to a skyscraper, which are pretty easy to create. The handful of advantages would be utterly dwarfed by the massive cost, so Im afraid this will stay a dream.
I can see a few issues with earth scrapers, depending on region: sewage removal, rainwater removal, snow removal, toxic/flammable/explosive heavier than air gases, no air circulation to carry away odors, mold/mildew, and radon gas. I'm sure these can be solved with some engineering, but it would probably be expensive.
This is such a well made video. Only suggestion is to turn the background music down a little bit to stay between -10 to -20db. Amazing job overall!!! Subscribed :)
I'm curious, what is preventing them from building retaining walls as they dig down (as are done horizontally when tunneling) to avoid the need for such massive construction zones? It would be complicated and take a long time to do of course, but I figure that would be worth avoiding the impossible cost of bulldozing an entire neighborhood to build one of these things.
Theres is already an 'earth-scraper' built on the big island of Hawaii. The military base is entirely underground, with several floors, a mall, training rooms, and living spaces. The entrance is within the pocket of one of the volcanic mounds, and helicopters are seen lowering through the mound into a hidden helicopter entrance.
You ignored how with this design, you reduce the number of walls that can have windows in them by more than half. So half your rooms, at least, that previously had a window now just simply don't, at all, like in a fallout shelter or something
@@goiterlanternbase nothing would replace a window which overlooks something nice, like a green park or at least a street. Living in such bunker would be depressing.
“Now this city, grim old city, it starts to grow. And when it meets with other towns, other cities, it takes them into itself, absorbs them, until soon enough there’s no land left, so the city spreads outwards into the sea, and when there’s no sea left, the city spreads upwards into the sky, and when there is no sky left... It burrows inwards. Like a cancer into the bowels of the planet. And eventually, there is nothing but the city. And so generations live and generations die in the warrens and the tunnels and even the lower levels of the surface, and they never see the sun.” - ‘The City,’ The Mechanisms
Great quality video, loved the animations! However theres a few additional issues to consider. - The risk of decompression sickness would put a limit on maximum depth in order to allow people to safely evacuate from any level - this type of structure would not work with many existing services. Buildings like this would get in the way of drainage, metros, etc Overall its a good concept, and I think up to about 10 storeys would function well underground. A pyramid shaped building with an earthscraper shaped void in it extending a handful of storeys below ground would be a good compromise that would harness the positive aspects of this design, as well as looking awesome
Thank you for the well written comment :) There are countless of downsides related to the concept. But I had to try to balance it out with the upsides 😅 One major issue is also avoiding the arcological objects under mexico city. The city consist of layers of layers of old cities
The interior is open to the air so the air pressure wouldn’t vary any more than it would between the top and bottom of a skyscraper. If you were building in Mexico City you could dig ~2km before reaching sea level, in which case the air pressure between the bottom of the ‘tower’ and the top would be no different than the difference between that of sea level and the cabin pressure of an airplane.
great video, but watch out with making the background music to loud. at some point it's a bit difficult to hear you talk because of the music (the music itself is very nice though!)
You're going to have entire city blocks worth of glass covering a skyscraper deep hole... I couldn't think of a worse idea if i tried. You do realize glass breaks right?
the glass is more likely the least concerning thing, you could get a thick layer of it, or build it in transparent glass bricks, or perhaps use composite binders to make the structure more ductile. the pressure, water problems, upwards mobility and responsiveness to emergencies make it quite infeasible
You sound like the kind of person that would say "cars are dangerous because gas explodes". The strongest commercially available in mass glass, in the US at least can withstand more than 7.92 million pounds per square foot even more at higher thickness
That is so cool, thanks for sharing. I just imagined 4 of these built next to each other , with bridges between, and then the city was flooded and because of the rising ground water they was left floating as a raft 🤯
I don't think it could work on earth, but when (not if) we will colonize mars or the moon, it would be very useful, due to no ground water, additional thermal/radiation insulation and other factors
Thank you for a nice video. Earth scrapers isn't a new concept, and I think what is interesting about them is that it forces you to reimagine your perception of both verticality and how to handle multi-level logistics. What will most likely happen in a large scale is a combination of going down and up simultaneously, with several transportation levels, to disperse congestion and population density. So far I haven't seen a good solution to this issue in large scale, but if you take earthscrapers, it is not difficult to imagine several earthscrapers with tunnels interconnecting them to alleviate both transportation and safety.
Wait a second, are you saying if we just dig a really deep hole, add some concrete and have a nozzle we could create strong jets of water that could power a generator? Basically free energy all the time?
Wow! I have goosebumps from the quality of the content 🙌 There are many stories on the internet about the hidden underground cities on Earth. Maybe those stories are based on some reasonable ideas.
This is a very interesting concept. I've wondered for quite a while why it had never been tried even as a novelty, especially for its ability to resist a lot of types of natural disasters. Or simply to double the amount of space that one skyscraper could have by essentially combining the tall building and deep building together. I do think there are ways to either prevent or even harness some challenges or dangerous of these buildings. Like how water tables and even floods can be simply pumped out as reservoirs for drinking water (the earth potentially even doing some level of filtering, making less work on water treatment), and might be able to provide areas for wildlife via artificial lakes in parks in other cases where that is not needed or is not viable. At the very least, the water can be used for hydro electric batteries (an already established and accepted technology) The area required for digging is a much more interesting challenge, mainly for the sake of trying to make a contained first draft in the middle of the city. I'm unsure on the method needed to resolve that, such as either simply making a less steep pit, or if there are engineering methods I don't know nearly enough about to lessen the required dig area. my first theory would be to go back to the cylindrical Japanese method, and essentially making a Drill that is designed to bore the entire path, and then stays there permanently as the frame of the building, slowly replacing the mechanics with a structural skeleton that could then have pre-fab housing installed into the grid pattern that new frame would make. Sorta similar to how large tunnels are bored out (granted those tunnels are MUCH smaller than the scale of the ground scraper proposed in this video, so the realistic result of this method would probably be closer to a city block of multiple holes arranged in a 4x4 pattern either connected above ground or through a grid of smaller walking tunnels. Safety, while a concern, i dont think is much worse than most skyscrapers, especially in these smaller scales, and in some cases i think i could actually be better. For instance, in a major catastrophic flood, lifeboats and floatation devices are fairly easy for most people to use, and can even facilitate multiple people or allow for operators to assist other less capable folks, especially when compared to a skyscraper parachute, which is limited in ability and may take some practice to use. for other evacuations, it may be possible to even double up life boats as alternate forms of escape like hot air balloons or simply being an emergency elevator (possibly hydro-powered again from reservoirs so they do not require electricity). idk just a few ideas. Really interesting concept!
They likely wouldn't use "traditional" pit excavation techniques they would use pylon and casings more akin to mining initially they could then reinforce the structures and cast the walls in place. Yes, you have to worry about ground water seepage and ingress but that could likely be dealt with. While it would be cool to go super deep for "earth scrapers" you could likely double the capacity in many areas if you just go 8-20 stories deep on an existing traditional structure. More like a tree that extends as deep as it is tall.
I could see this happening... as a one-off in a far less urban area that would be in service for like 2 years at best, resulting in the waste of millions of tons of concrete.
While probably not the brightest of ideas the concept is not useless. It's unrealistic to imagine earth-scrapers will ever become a thing, but maybe smaller structures of this sort, with 3 levels of depth at most, can be of used to provide safer housing in areas vulnerable to earthquakes. With reduced depth light might not be as bad of an issue, and the model could even become preferable in regions with high light exposure and temperatures. I imagine something like this could be of use in extremely arid regions (like the Sahara) where temperatures during summer are above 50 C, making less light exposure something more desirable.
This would be an awesome project from the perspective of engineering geology. I could see them doing an open-pit closer to the actual final footprint and using micro tunneling or another method to drill tunnel shafts for workers similar to open pit mining in order to preserve the existing cityscape and avoid slope stability problems.
As a civil engineer, this has to be the dumbest use of tax money. If they believe this is better than a skyscraper, I’ll be astonished. But hey, it’s innovation tho, nice video.
I like the optimistic outlook of this, but in reality this would be a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape, more so in Mexico where the gini index shows the disparity between the population
Hey! Thank you for watching my first video!
A lot of comments about the music being too loud. I will fix this for the next one 😅
Wait this is your first video? I was offered this, had no idea you weren't a big channel.
This is a negative temple design and it makes sense since Mexicans like sacrificing kids and random people this design is that of the black negative temple that holds the worst evil entity in existence known to Indian culture for years stay out of Mexico folks
How did you not think flooding would be a problem? An expensive problem.
@dallassegno
It’s not even viable because of this.
Some people just have to justify their middle class existence with ideas like this.
First Video omg, I was looking for more in your channel. Can't wait for more, this is awesome. Thank you!
Mexico City, the city built on a giant natural lake. What a great place to build underground 🧠
tbh it will never be build, im from cdmx and theres no way it gets permition to use the historical plaza
i was just thinking th same, mexico city is a joke of city planning
Exactly what I was thinking! Like I can see it being built in a area like Washington
isn't the ancient aztec capitol underneath the city?
@@JohnthemapguyADHDMe The first comment was saying how Mexico City was built on a lake Washington DC was also built on a swamp and River tributary
Allowing free access to the "roof" of this thing means people down there will definitely NOT get maximized sunlight, as the top will be constantly flooded with tourists.
Ooh. That's a good point I haven't seen anyone make.
immediate thought was that it would be impossible for women to wear short dresses/skirts
Also fuck you if you have a fear of hights.
You are standing over like a 100m canyon on glass.
Shit bricks.
@@BeybarysYessenaliyev from top of a skyscraper nothing matters
Just make it property of the building for only residents. If they can come up with this and theoretically make it work, the problems we make up are minor ones.
"THE SECOND DRILL HAS HIT THE NORTH EARTHSCRAPER!"
119 tragedy, we should never forget about.
@@hyy3657 611
Disrespectful and distatesful, at least fix the math
@@hyy3657 novenber nineth, how could i forget it
@@minecat1839 happy jews
"Building it down into the ground has natural thermic insulation"
yeah dude, but the ground gets warmer, not colder the deeper you go.
3°C+ per 100 meters down
Imagine living at the bottom, where is 9 degrees hotter than on top, there is only sunlight for 3 hours a day (during summer only) and if the foundation cracks, water with shoot into the hole with 100 bar pressure
this thing would be amazing as an abandoned project taken over by gangs in the next cyberpunk game
dogtown type shit
Exactly this.
Dangerous mega-projects like this can only be viable with godlike safety measures.
Like there needs to be an outer shell surrounding the groundscraper, and an empty pocket between the outer shell and the actual building (so an earthquake doesn't drown tens of thousands of people).
It needs backup systems for backup systems, multiple tunnels to ensure evacuation is always possible, special lights on lower levels for vitamin deficiency due to lack of sunlight, an insanely impressive air filtration system to offset disease from a shared air supply, a dedicated team of engineers always watching over all these things, a dedicated emergency room in a convenient place etc...
Think some random capitalist is gonna triple his construction costs to create this thing properly? Fat chance.
@@TheAlexRhodes It's genuinely amazing that it's more dangerous to build down into solid rock than to build towering skyscrapers that sway in the wind.
@@PumpkinHoard Yeah, though most of the problems come from the number of people, undergound shelters are quite comfy when a small group has it all to itself.
The temperature is constant further down, not wildly fluctuate as on the surface
Idk if someone's mentioned it already, but I believe the video would benefit noticeably if the background music were at a lower volume, making your voice easier to hear.
An architect's dream is an engineer's nightmare, and an engineer's dream is an architect's nightmare
So... do archictecs love air resistance?
an engineer's dream is a mechanic's nightmare
@@mihaleben6051 yes we do, is called ventilation
As an architect, it's my nightmare too. It'd be like living in a building facing someone else's window
I think an engineers dream is a architect dream in the eclectic architecture and in xviii century architecture
My first thought when I saw the thumbnail was: flooding and water. Glad you addressed it.
It wasn't addressed good enough. A single failure point would quickly fill up the entire volume with water. How do you detect if a bad actor is drilling a hole somewhere?
@@ozAqVvhhNue I don't think anyone is "accidentally" drilling through 2 meters of concrete. HAHAHA, it already hurts to try that in 20 cm
@@SamFigueroa do you know what the term 'bad actor' means?
@@SamFigueroaYou think there won't be any plumbing in that place or something?
@@tylerian4648 That should all stay inside of the barrier behind service walls separating it from living spaces.
+ living | service | 2 m barrier |
While in some countries the entire water pressure in the pipes is handled by gravity alone, without using any pumps, here all the wastewater has to be painstakingly pumped up. It's an absolutely dogshit concept. Just imagine if the pump fails, good luck being on the lower floors.
Man didnt think about that. Good point
You're mentioning something that is a neutral point though. Skyscrapers have to pump water up but sewage goes down with gravity. Earthscrapers are the reverse with sewage up and water going down. Only real difference between the two is that Earthscrapers would likely need sump pumps to deal with ground water seeping in and fires are a much greater threat to those in an Earthscraper.
@@_gungrave_6802 Pumping sewage vs water in NOT the same thing.
@@_gungrave_6802 Man, if water fails, I dont have shower. If water pipe fails on lower levels- someone is going to die, very painfully so.
@@Remsster You missed my point entirely as I was talking on the differences when it comes to design and not what is harder to pump upwards.
Wow, the quality of the animations in this video is off the charts and the narration is really clear and well done too. Instant subscription! Keep up the good work and great video quality and you'll go far with your channel
It’s funny that Mexican architects came up with this, considering the fact that Mexico City is literally sinking into the Earth
in a few years, this will level with the current skyscrapers! win win!
This is one of those ideas (like hyperloop) that would make a lot more sense on a completely different planet with different challenges and conditions.
Long way of saying it makes no sense lol
This reminds me of the habitats used on Ceres in The Expanse books
Where would the hyperloop make sense?
what’s hyperloop
Different planet...They do happen to live in giant sinkholes on Utapau in Star Wars...
The concept of making a downwards building really "tall" is very weird for multiple reasons.
1) Windows! No matter how big of a window up top you will make, the building will steel feel like a deep pit, you will feel like you're at the bottom of a well, just the top "mega window" won't be enough light.
2) Water! If any extra water from a flood or a broken pipe has to go somewhere, it will likely go literally drowning bottom residents, considering the funnel shape of the building.
3) Dirt is harder than Air! That's right, unlike with scyscrapers - if you want to build a downwards building you'll have to dig and also dump somewhere TONS of dirt, rock, whatever other inconveniences you may find.
4) Service paths! For a deep building you will have to dig much deeper and all around it to lay down electric cables and water pipes.
5) Light! Continuing the problem with windows and VERY limited sunlight as you go deeper down the building, the eletricity consumption will rise by a lot.
6) Ventilation! You'll have to use even more electricity and dig even more dirt to constantly force the air down to the bottom of the building.
A real engineer will probably spot ten more problems with this that I'm too lazy or incapable of finding.
Architects seemingly always manage to come up with the most impractical and atrociously complicated ideas that they *want* to work, doesn't mean they do work.
Tbh the only relevance this concept has here is the last sentence, because all the previous points are intuitively assumed, but the last sentence is a straight up true prediction that'll be funny as hell, bc architects get so proud when their ideas work
Also, "doesn't mean the do work," well yeah, but doesn't mean they don't, which is the only interesting part of architecture in general
@@IsakLevanaWhat does it mean for a design like this to ‘work’? I don’t think anybody thinks a structure like this is impossible to build; there just isn’t any good reason to take on so many extra design and engineering challenges unless you live in a world where buildings need to be kaiju-proofed or something.
An Architect's dream, A Engineer's nightmare.
I mean if the concept was just a little more lateral than vertical, this could be possible for shops and walkways like in some major cities. As for building homes I doubt anyone would want to live there.
@@radicalfishstickstm8563 This very true and was my first thought as well.
If they had gone for something more reasonable, like maybe house 1,000 people in a building 10 storeys deep? Make it more oblong (rather than a square) to better capture sunlight?
That would be way more reasonable then this absurd idea of 100,000.
the prospect of rain and floods in such a place makes me shiver
And I've seen the flooding in Mexico during rainy season. It's no joke. Turns the streets into rivers.
@@johnshite4656 Watching a flood above you through your collective glass roof from the lowest floor is a man made horror beyond our comprehension.
There's a place in China that had an underground mall/plaza. There was a huge flood and the entire level was underwater. Now imagine 10 levels down and it's not just your business, it's your home.
sounds like building a skyscraper, but you have to remove a small mountain of material before you start building. Plus dense smog will drift right down.
Dumb on so many levels🤣👍 Especially each one below ground😏
Trying to change everything about building because of one stupid regulation
@@michaelsurratt1864I would change the regulation to be you can’t build that high around a certain number of blocks of the historic buildings. Due to very real concerns of disaster causing them to damage the historical properties.
But farther away? Go for it, safely of course. It would also diversify the skyline based on where history is at.
@@michaelsurratt1864 its not "stupid" it is LITERALLY tear to not turn your liffe into a cyberpunk dystopia
@@C3l3bi1 no I'm saying the regulation that you can't build over however many stories high is stupid. I mean the building is stupid as well but it's only designed because they're not allowed to go up.
Was anyone surprised this 3D editor had only one video to his soon to be very auspicious career?
I was
Underground office blocks was something I was surprised hadn't been done sooner when I was a kid.
Eventually I realised it was because of earthquakes and it's much easier to lower someone in danger out of a skyscraper than raise them out of an earthscraper.
aren't elevators needed in both cases?
@@MarcusAseth No, you never want to rely on an elevator in an emergency situation. Especially during a fire, they will most likely become death traps.
@@MarcusAsethropes exist. With gravity you only need a way to slow how fast you fall going down. Going up you need to spend a bunch of energy to fight against gravity which is very dangerous in situations like fires were moving upward is most dangerous
Yes, now we can go to work in an actual giant pit of despair instead of a figurative one. Imagine how laxadaisical things will be when it's that far out of sight. Who will go down to investigate maintenance and other issues? You know the boss's office won't be at the bottom. Also, see the meme about "The children yern for the mines." as I feel it's applicable.
Lower someone out of a skyscraper? Okay, how many people were lowered out of the windows of the Twin Towers on 9/11?
Biggest problems for me: poor sunlight and no natural ventilation
i hate sunlight and people who open windows
One way mirrors and reflective surfaces around the sides of the hole could be used to get sunlight down towards lower levels. but it would never be like being above ground
@@amazingbutno5303 with mirrors you would have the issue of fires starting from focused light
@@slav4335I think he means like the idea of the Japanese depthscraper at 2:57, a giant mirror that reflects it downwards indiscriminately
Presumably itd have to be deliberately made more convex than concave just for the best chance at avoiding any one focused point of reflected light; but that doesn't change the fact that a big mirror used to avoid focusing light would be massive and butt ugly in the imagined skyline of the Mexico City earthscraper
Dracula u ain't slick@@HUEHUEUHEPony
0:13 dwarves talking about human architecture
He even has a dwarve sounding name, Torgeir
Bruh this gonna be DRG
ROCK AND STONE!
"I am Torgeir"
definitely of dwarvish ethnicity
**diggy diggy hole intensifies**
I really like the idea of earth scrapers it’s so solarpunky and is so aesthetically pleasing
3 cents before I watch: there are many benefits to an earthscraper:
1. With proper ventilation, an earthscraper can be built deeper than a skyscraper can be built tall
2. Because of more support, a ln earthscraper can be much wider than a skyscraper of equal height
3. The engineers can almost wholly ignore wind
4. The materials obtained while excavating the foundation can be used in the project or sold to help fund it
5. An earthscraper is more visually flattering and that dimension of architectural art hasn't been explored
Drawbacks:
1. Potential disruption of the regions water table
2. Skyscrapers are a technology and art form that has been pursued, researched, and accomodated for for 200 years. The infrastructure and jobs for creating them already exists en masse, so replacing or even supplementing them with earthscrapers going forward would be very hard, especially since the markets dont like change, even if it proves profitable.
Joke benefits
1. You can pretend you live on Utapau
2. Can you imagine how hard 9/11 would have been to pull of if the wtc was underground?
No natural light*
Weak to fire*
the animations are so clean
Thank you!
although video games are seldom a good source for information, broken clocks are right twice a day et cetera.
This all reminds me of Rapture from Bioshock:
"Build it like a tub or it will become a sewer."
Drainage is a huge issue when your structures are extending *beneath* the water table. The entire thing will have to be a watertight vessel. Like a boat embedded in the earth. In order to make drainage even basically possible, you will likely need to dig out cisterns to rapidly drain off sudden inflow. The cistern would be a sort of buffer to prevent runoff from backing up. The cistern would also necessarily have specialized dedicated fluid purging machinery - massive pumps for pushing the truly gargantuan quantities of water out to make room for more. This is all going to add a great deal to the cost of operation, just in terms of maintenance alone, without even considering the energy costs for when the system needs to RUN. Towers are, for better or for worse, better disposed for ventilation and drainage. Also, excavation is astonishingly expensive, far more so than construction. There's a reason we don't bore tunnels everywhere.
subterranean buildings and tunnels are expensive, like energy/defense r&d labs. or military installations. subterranean real estate is not for civilians, i'd wager "we" do have quite a few tunnels everywhere.
There is little information why the Japanese didn't go through with their groundscraper. They probably did, to a degree. They are making the AI robot army in there.
Nothing empirical on my end, just hunches and creative thinking.
@@unclepaulie4233 well there are several damn good reasons for japan to *never* build such a thing:
1. it's tectonically active. alleged rhetoric about "sometimes tunnels are even safer in an earth quake" aside, even IF it were less likely to sustain critical structural damage from an earthquake or geothermal eruption of some kind, if it DID it would be utterly catastrophic. Building collapses suck, but can you imagine if a residential groundscraper CAVED IN? The humanitarian crisis of it? you can't just dig it out willy nilly, further disturbing it would very likely cause the cave-in to settle FURTHER and kill even more people who were trapped. On the surface, you can approach such disasters from many angles and perform the careful extrication of survivors with a lot less complication.
2. the whole nation is an island. yes there are some areas quite a bit above sea level but its biggest urban center is on a bay AND encounters tsunamis, coastal flooding, and monsoons regularly. Tokyo, for further instance, required a massive cistern system that inspired the cisterns level in the original Mirror's Edge game.
3. who's it even gonna be for? population numbers are crashing *precipitously* in japan right now, even if it weren't for civil residency, staffing any kind of industrial, commercial, scientific, or military facility of this kind would be much more economical if one were to simply bulldoze much of the abandoned surface structures and rebuild something where they once stood.
you know where an 'earthscraper' might actually make sense, though? ironically enough... the moon. You'd be hard pressed to find a better protection from solar and interstellar cosmic radiation than several (to several hundred) meters of lunar regolith surrounding you on all sides. there is no liquid water table, furthermore; any water on (or in) Luna is gonna be frozen solid. In areas that we might build habitats, any HVAC/environmental systems we are using to make it a comfortable temperature will not thermally penetrate the regolith more than a couple meters tops. but at that point we'll be eschewing natural light entirely because outside of an atmosphere ten miles thick "THE SUN IS A DEADLY LASER". If anything, earth--that is to say, MOONscrapers are a far better habitation option for humans on the moon than any over-the-surface structure.
I can already guess this cistern should likely be the volume of the pit-scraper itself, and it will get drawn up at some slightly more reasonable total volume, and then engineers on location will shrink it further, and then builders will shrink it even further....
@@Stonehawk you should make a video to explain i cant read
@Stonehawk ...make a video.
I understand that it is very typical, when presenting topics like this, to brush over the major challenges involved, but I'm still kinda disappointed. The problems mentioned aren't quantified at all, not all important problems are brought up (that's a lot of dirt you have to haul, and the bottom of the hole is probably rock which would require blasting), and potential solutions are not discussed.
I don't really think that there are solutions to those
There are not solutions to such problems this will never the leave the concept board
@@Eggplanter_2027I think this might be possible to be built on an valley. You go down but basically still on the ground at the same time (just different ground level.)
Basically like a skyscrapper that's fused into the side of a cliff.
@@davidsentanu7836 Ah, a valley, where flooding is even more of a threat because rain that lands on the adjacent slopes is _also_ your problem. I shudder to imagine a landslide or mudslide near one of these things. It'd be literally inescapable.
maybe some commenters will have a solution, no survey necessary!
As an urban planner, if you put five seconds of thought into this it falls apart.
Excavating all that would cost far, far more than just erecting a metal spine and putting stone and glass around it.
If ANYTHING goes wrong, everyone dies. I cannot imagine how devastating an earthquake or flooding would be compared to a skyscraper, which are pretty easy to create.
The handful of advantages would be utterly dwarfed by the massive cost, so Im afraid this will stay a dream.
A flood would be devastating, and earthquake will barely be felt.
Now we get to build Coruscant.
I am honoured to be here when a high quality channel that was just born, having 87 subscribers. This channel will go big very soon, I just know it.
Haha thank you! That means a lot!
True that king
Definitely!
397 for me, its 398 now 😉
Dang I thought this channel was well known ig I’ve stumbled across a hidden gem 5 minutes in and I check
I can see a few issues with earth scrapers, depending on region: sewage removal, rainwater removal, snow removal, toxic/flammable/explosive heavier than air gases, no air circulation to carry away odors, mold/mildew, and radon gas. I'm sure these can be solved with some engineering, but it would probably be expensive.
Incredibly innovative idea for a structure chosen to be built at one of the most incredibly disadvantageous locations in the world.
Wow. That's your first video? Well done mate.. Well done. I'm looking forward to seeing you do amazingly well on YT. Welcome! :)
Finally a channel in this space that isn't AI slop
This is such a well made video. Only suggestion is to turn the background music down a little bit to stay between -10 to -20db. Amazing job overall!!! Subscribed :)
Thank you! Will remember that
Really high quality content, right now only 80 views and 5 subscriber on this channel. I know this is gonna skyrocket in few days . Best of luck
22k views and 1.3k subscribers. You were very right
@@jameswilson8907 yup
Called it 👌👍
Beautiful Blender Work! Excited to see your channel grow :)
I've come to learn that "challenging the norm" usually means a under qualified dimwit made something that sucks but is marketed pretentiously.
2:09 ladies, don't come wearing skirts
🤫
🤣🤣
This channel will blow off
Thank you so much!
The term is usually "blow up?"
I'm curious, what is preventing them from building retaining walls as they dig down (as are done horizontally when tunneling) to avoid the need for such massive construction zones? It would be complicated and take a long time to do of course, but I figure that would be worth avoiding the impossible cost of bulldozing an entire neighborhood to build one of these things.
Perhaps the size? Not sure, but that does seem like a good idea, better than pouring the concrete as you go
Thank you for pormising me high quality wideos. I am facinated with urbant living.
DAFT PUNK MENTIONED!!! 2:32
No way this channel has only 63 subs. I thought I was watching RLL or Wendover, something like that. Great job!
Thanks!
I’m genuinely impressed with the quality of this video. Well done!
The big problem with earth scrapers is that when you make a big hole, you also need to make a pile that's equally as big.
Future site of a lovely lake
Theres is already an 'earth-scraper' built on the big island of Hawaii. The military base is entirely underground, with several floors, a mall, training rooms, and living spaces. The entrance is within the pocket of one of the volcanic mounds, and helicopters are seen lowering through the mound into a hidden helicopter entrance.
You ignored how with this design, you reduce the number of walls that can have windows in them by more than half. So half your rooms, at least, that previously had a window now just simply don't, at all, like in a fallout shelter or something
With led lights, windows are no longer necessary🤗 Even with 70w HID lights, the costs of a window, level out after 17 years.
@@goiterlanternbase nothing would replace a window which overlooks something nice, like a green park or at least a street. Living in such bunker would be depressing.
0:35 it is simple, runoff and pollution.
Why do lenses have shadow??? 3:18
😂
@ damn, only 1 minute 👌
It’s fucking 3D all this work and you just mention this one mistake 😂
1st vid of yours and it's already impressive cannot wait for more videos from you :D
I thank myself a month ago so much for actually pressing this video, because it actually came out in my English Exam, thank you Solve
One of the best if not the best video i have seen on this topic
High quality renders, well explained and structured AND doesn't yap for 30+ minutes? hell yeah sign me up! May you get the deserved attention 🙏
fire first vid dude, excited to see you grow
“Now this city, grim old city, it starts to grow. And when it meets with other towns, other cities, it takes them into itself, absorbs them, until soon enough there’s no land left, so the city spreads outwards into the sea, and when there’s no sea left, the city spreads upwards into the sky, and when there is no sky left... It burrows inwards. Like a cancer into the bowels of the planet. And eventually, there is nothing but the city. And so generations live and generations die in the warrens and the tunnels and even the lower levels of the surface, and they never see the sun.” - ‘The City,’ The Mechanisms
I'm subscriber number 181. 3 days into the release of this video. Feeling good about this channel.
Good luck man!
Thank you 🥰
3 days have passed since then and I’m subscriber number 835. I think in a month this channel will definitely reach 10k subs.
Good luck!
Great quality video, loved the animations!
However theres a few additional issues to consider.
- The risk of decompression sickness would put a limit on maximum depth in order to allow people to safely evacuate from any level
- this type of structure would not work with many existing services. Buildings like this would get in the way of drainage, metros, etc
Overall its a good concept, and I think up to about 10 storeys would function well underground. A pyramid shaped building with an earthscraper shaped void in it extending a handful of storeys below ground would be a good compromise that would harness the positive aspects of this design, as well as looking awesome
Thank you for the well written comment :) There are countless of downsides related to the concept. But I had to try to balance it out with the upsides 😅 One major issue is also avoiding the arcological objects under mexico city. The city consist of layers of layers of old cities
The interior is open to the air so the air pressure wouldn’t vary any more than it would between the top and bottom of a skyscraper.
If you were building in Mexico City you could dig ~2km before reaching sea level, in which case the air pressure between the bottom of the ‘tower’ and the top would be no different than the difference between that of sea level and the cabin pressure of an airplane.
great video, but watch out with making the background music to loud. at some point it's a bit difficult to hear you talk because of the music (the music itself is very nice though!)
Thank you for the feedback :) Youre not the first one pointing that out 😅
Reminds me of the Nerv Headquarters from Evangelions
We have this type of ancient architects in india its called rani ki vav and it's atleast decade old .
Bad idea. Egress from this deathtrap will be a nightmare.
Seriously. They'll make a movie. XD
resident evil
@vic6730 Hahaha! Knew it! Is it any good? :)
@@jamesgizasson some critics call it a bad movie and it's a little cheesy but i love it, good fun
@vic6730 Criticism never stopped me from liking something awful... :3
You're going to have entire city blocks worth of glass covering a skyscraper deep hole... I couldn't think of a worse idea if i tried. You do realize glass breaks right?
the glass is more likely the least concerning thing, you could get a thick layer of it, or build it in transparent glass bricks, or perhaps use composite binders to make the structure more ductile. the pressure, water problems, upwards mobility and responsiveness to emergencies make it quite infeasible
Pretty sure everything breaks
You sound like the kind of person that would say "cars are dangerous because gas explodes". The strongest commercially available in mass glass, in the US at least can withstand more than 7.92 million pounds per square foot even more at higher thickness
THAT was your takeaway from this concept????
4:40 Skyscrapers? Earthscrapers? No no, Waterscrapers.
That is called a pier (though I would love to call them seascrapers)
@@exquisitetoast3859 I remember researching this term "seascrapers" and that they had already taken it, and modern pirates will love it.
Wow! This channel creates such strangely beautiful videos. I subscribed immediately. ❤
That is so cool, thanks for sharing. I just imagined 4 of these built next to each other , with bridges between, and then the city was flooded and because of the rising ground water they was left floating as a raft 🤯
2:32 Daft Punk spotted
Exactly what I was going to mention! Iconic record 🤣
2:07 You would be standing on glass above a 300 metre pit!
Yess !!! Id love it personally!
@@TheOneCity1 ok just dont look down
sustainable? thats a fuck ton of concrete!
and skyscrapers are much better.. right?? this is STILL a skyscraper, but going underground.
@@AfterDarkVa usual skyscraper uses less materials and is far safer and easier to repair
Here before this channel blows up :)
The quality of the video is truly breathtaking! It's really a pleasure watching your videos every time!
A true gem, thank you.
Subscribed!
I don't think it could work on earth, but when (not if) we will colonize mars or the moon, it would be very useful, due to no ground water, additional thermal/radiation insulation and other factors
Good point :)
It won't be Moon colonization but Moon exploitation for resources, similar to oceans. There is a slight difference
This video has fantastic artstyle ❤
Would be a super cool mall
We need more videos like this!
And by we I mean your watchers, but also some public in general.
Thank you :)
This made me happy for some reason, human design and engineering will reach levels we'd never know in the future.
Thank you for a nice video. Earth scrapers isn't a new concept, and I think what is interesting about them is that it forces you to reimagine your perception of both verticality and how to handle multi-level logistics.
What will most likely happen in a large scale is a combination of going down and up simultaneously, with several transportation levels, to disperse congestion and population density. So far I haven't seen a good solution to this issue in large scale, but if you take earthscrapers, it is not difficult to imagine several earthscrapers with tunnels interconnecting them to alleviate both transportation and safety.
In Mexico City?… isnt it famously very earthquake prone and also sinking?
Wait a second, are you saying if we just dig a really deep hole, add some concrete and have a nozzle we could create strong jets of water that could power a generator? Basically free energy all the time?
The animations are marvelous !!
Wow! I have goosebumps from the quality of the content 🙌
There are many stories on the internet about the hidden underground cities on Earth. Maybe those stories are based on some reasonable ideas.
Very well made video and very high quality 3D animation. Congrats!
Very well presented, the production is very suprisingly good for a 7K sub channel. I expect to see this one blow up.
Instantly subbed. Keep it up!
The concept is just like a sim city arcology but below ground. Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
This is a very interesting concept. I've wondered for quite a while why it had never been tried even as a novelty, especially for its ability to resist a lot of types of natural disasters. Or simply to double the amount of space that one skyscraper could have by essentially combining the tall building and deep building together.
I do think there are ways to either prevent or even harness some challenges or dangerous of these buildings. Like how water tables and even floods can be simply pumped out as reservoirs for drinking water (the earth potentially even doing some level of filtering, making less work on water treatment), and might be able to provide areas for wildlife via artificial lakes in parks in other cases where that is not needed or is not viable. At the very least, the water can be used for hydro electric batteries (an already established and accepted technology)
The area required for digging is a much more interesting challenge, mainly for the sake of trying to make a contained first draft in the middle of the city. I'm unsure on the method needed to resolve that, such as either simply making a less steep pit, or if there are engineering methods I don't know nearly enough about to lessen the required dig area.
my first theory would be to go back to the cylindrical Japanese method, and essentially making a Drill that is designed to bore the entire path, and then stays there permanently as the frame of the building, slowly replacing the mechanics with a structural skeleton that could then have pre-fab housing installed into the grid pattern that new frame would make. Sorta similar to how large tunnels are bored out (granted those tunnels are MUCH smaller than the scale of the ground scraper proposed in this video, so the realistic result of this method would probably be closer to a city block of multiple holes arranged in a 4x4 pattern either connected above ground or through a grid of smaller walking tunnels.
Safety, while a concern, i dont think is much worse than most skyscrapers, especially in these smaller scales, and in some cases i think i could actually be better. For instance, in a major catastrophic flood, lifeboats and floatation devices are fairly easy for most people to use, and can even facilitate multiple people or allow for operators to assist other less capable folks, especially when compared to a skyscraper parachute, which is limited in ability and may take some practice to use.
for other evacuations, it may be possible to even double up life boats as alternate forms of escape like hot air balloons or simply being an emergency elevator (possibly hydro-powered again from reservoirs so they do not require electricity).
idk just a few ideas. Really interesting concept!
FANTASTIC! ...but you will have to use a hexagonal planform instead of square.
They likely wouldn't use "traditional" pit excavation techniques they would use pylon and casings more akin to mining initially they could then reinforce the structures and cast the walls in place. Yes, you have to worry about ground water seepage and ingress but that could likely be dealt with. While it would be cool to go super deep for "earth scrapers" you could likely double the capacity in many areas if you just go 8-20 stories deep on an existing traditional structure. More like a tree that extends as deep as it is tall.
I could see this happening... as a one-off in a far less urban area that would be in service for like 2 years at best, resulting in the waste of millions of tons of concrete.
6:00 hear me out what if you build it from the top down as you excavate to provide ground and support
Fantastic video! I look forward to more😊
Love it. The cleaning costs for that glass will be insane.
been on youtube for many years. this is a phenomenal video. if i could invest in a channel i would choose this one. good luck brother 💪🏽
While probably not the brightest of ideas the concept is not useless. It's unrealistic to imagine earth-scrapers will ever become a thing, but maybe smaller structures of this sort, with 3 levels of depth at most, can be of used to provide safer housing in areas vulnerable to earthquakes. With reduced depth light might not be as bad of an issue, and the model could even become preferable in regions with high light exposure and temperatures. I imagine something like this could be of use in extremely arid regions (like the Sahara) where temperatures during summer are above 50 C, making less light exposure something more desirable.
Incredible video from a fellow structural engineer! The 3D renders were amazing!
We turnin Earth into Coruscant with this one 🗣️🗣️🗣️💯🗣️‼️‼️
This would be an awesome project from the perspective of engineering geology.
I could see them doing an open-pit closer to the actual final footprint and using micro tunneling or another method to drill tunnel shafts for workers similar to open pit mining in order to preserve the existing cityscape and avoid slope stability problems.
The dwarven instinct to build a big hole to live in
As a civil engineer, this has to be the dumbest use of tax money. If they believe this is better than a skyscraper, I’ll be astonished. But hey, it’s innovation tho, nice video.
I like the optimistic outlook of this, but in reality this would be a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape, more so in Mexico where the gini index shows the disparity between the population
This was a beautiful video.