SEP 05

When it comes to sustainability, there may be lessons to be learned from ancient Mesopotamania. An environmental design company called Timelinks (based in the surprisingly environmentally innovative Dubai) has come up with an idea for a city complex that rivals the pyramids.

The ancient ziggurats were towers of receding stories with a temple at the top (better for the priests, apparently, to escape rising flood waters). Timelinks envisions its Ziggurat to be a carbon-neutral city of as many as a million people living in 2.3 square kilometres where cars aren’t allowed. Much like a pyramid-shaped Masdar. The prototype will be exhibited at Cityscape Dubai, a business real estate convention in October.

The Ziggurat will be almost totally self-sufficient energy wise, according to Ridas Matonis, the managing director of Timelinks. Powering the city will be through steam power and wind turbine technology. Part of what makes Ziggurat so sustainable is piling people on top of each other means using less space. The developers believe that whole cities can be accommodated in less than 10% of the original land surface.

Traveling around the Zigurrat would be done through 360 degree integrated networks, kind of like elevators or subway cars that go sideways and up and down. It’s a neat concept, but how viable is it?

In an interview with World Architecture News, Martijn Kramer, managing director of The International Institute for the Urban Environment says that the general reaction is the Ziggurat is viable from a technical point of view. “However, reflecting from a more sustainable holistic approach, we do wonder if the food supply and waste system are taken care for, as the concept seems rather based upon carbon neutrality and energy saving,” Kramer says.

The company has applied to the EU for a grant to look at developing the project further.

Via Dvice, World Architecture News

Comments (5)

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Perfect for quarantines.
written by Mike Shedlock, September 06, 2008

With no cars, there will be no way to escape from the City once the virus du jour (bird flu, airborne ebola, weaponized smallpox, whatever) breaks out. You just lock down the monorails, station guards at the exits, and let the diseased people kill each other.

There's a good reason cryptogon filed this one under "Kill Off".

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Through the cracks...
written by val, September 07, 2008

A small but hugely important details seemse to have slipped through the cracks of reason: the artice says the towers energy will be provided by wind power and STEAM. How exectly is 'steam' a source of power? It can at most be a transfer medium for energy produced elsewere. The same basic missconceptium seems to linger about hidrogen, for example. Both steam and hidrogen need to be produced by using an input of energy, their 'greenness' being established by the origin of that energy.

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I wish to subscribe to your newsletter
written by Virtual Insanity, September 08, 2008

Mike: why is this different to any other city? Block the main road exits, and watch everyone kill each other. At least this is only a mile across, so you can walk to an exit, or smash a window or whatever. Hurricane Katrina proved that even when there is a will to get people out, in practice evacuation requires careful planning.

Paranoid much?

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written by wedding dresses, October 13, 2009

The developers believe that whole cities can be accommodated in less than 10% of the original land surface.

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resorse beyst econome
written by robert laszczkowski, November 21, 2009

look it up please

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