Is This A Good Idea : Science Channel

October 21, 2011

Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake. For example, when I was poking around on the Web this morning, I came across an i09 article whose headline included the words" 65-story-tall skyscraper buried under Mexico City." My initial thought was that somewhere Erich von Daniken, author of Chariots of the Gods, must be having a laugh at the expense of his numerous scientific debunkers, since archaeologists had finally uncovered evidence that ancient UFO pilots shared their civilization's construction techniques with the Aztecs. Imagine my chagrin when I realized that I'd had yet another Emily "violins on TV" Litella moment. The article actually is about a proposal by BNKR Arquitectura, a Mexican architectural firm, to build a new 65-story skyscraper underneath the Mexican metropolis.

An Earthscraper in Mexico City

BNKR's upside-down underground skyscraper would solve what the firm says is a major problem in Mexico City. The historic center area needs more retail, office and residential space, but there is limited room and zoning regulations prohibit building structures more than eight stories tall. Ergo, the Earthscraper, whose only above-ground presence would be a glass-floored plaza that would serve as a giant skylight for an inverted pyramid that would reach about 1,000 feet down into the ground.

And despite my cluelessness, it seems that the Earthscraper has been getting a lot of attention throughout the Googleplex, including this article in the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper web site, which includes gigantic, spectacular blowups of BNKR's speculative renderings of the structure. Huffington Post has this article, which includes a video. Dvice.com calls the idea "monstrous" but also "beautiful."

As it turns out, the Mexican architects who dreamed up the Earthscraper aren't the only contemporary visionaries who want to erect upside-down subterranean buildings. Architect Matthew Fromboluti of Washington University in St. Louis has designed a similar project, called Above Below, which would be built in an abandoned pit mine outside Bisbee, Ariz . Here's a 2010 evolo.us article on the proposal, which notes:

The building is completely self-sustaining, with its own power source, water recycling system, and mechanisms such as a solar chimney to control the artificial climate. Enclosed with a dome roof, the building is completely contained underground, with only strategically-placed skylights for climate control providing access to the world above ground.

Villages in Caverns

People started living and working underground in caves back in prehistoric times, and in southern Tunisia, ancient people escaped the desert heat by building entire villages in caverns (the same ones that later served as a picturesque backdrop for Indiana Jones and the Temples of Doom.) Inhabitants of ancient Rome built the catacombs, extensive tunnels beneath the city that served as cemeteries (though probably not as hiding places, as popular legends suggest). In the 1800s, a French engineer named Marc Brunel came up with a device called the tunneling shield -- a giant iron box that could be pushed into soft soil to create tunnel walls, which could then be reinforced by masonry. That technology eventually was used to create the London Underground, a massive system of underground rail lines, and similar train systems in other major cities of the world. During World War II, both sides built underground to avoid enemy bombers. According to this 1942 article from the Evening Independent , the British built a massive aircraft factory 90 feet beneath the surface of an undisclosed location, And as this 1998 Los Angeles Times article details, the Japanese military regime forced thousands of Korean laborers to carve a massive underground complex into the mountains surrounding the town of Matsushiro, so that it would have a headquarters impervious to Allied bombs. But according to Loretta Hall, author of Underground Buildings: More Than Meets the Eye, construction of entire major buildings underground didn't really take off until the Cold War era of the 1950s. Fearing a sneak nuclear attack, U.S. officials began building elaborate underground refuges for key personnel, equipment and documents. Similarly, to protect young students from fallout, the city of Artesia, N.M., decided to build its elementary school entirely below ground, according to this 1960 Time magazine article. (The space also doubled as a municipal emergency refuge.) Meanwhile, private citizens began digging in their backyards so they could erect their own personal bomb shelters.

The nuclear apocalypse fortunately didn't happen, but people and businesses began finding that underground buildings had certain advantages. As Hall notes, underground buildings are more energy efficient, in part because it takes longer for the effect of the "thermal flywheel," the atmospheric temperature fluctuations that we notice on the surface, to penetrate the ground. "Winter's coolness reaches an underground building in the summer," she writes. "And summer warmth arrives in the winter." Additionally, because an underground structure is contained, it conserves warmth generated by electrical appliances, cooking and even inhabitants' body heat. Additionally, in some ways underground structures actually are safer from earthquakes, because strong ground motion decreases with depth. And because they don't have exposed facades, underground buildings don't suffer deterioration from the effects of sun, wind and rain.

Save 85% on Your Heating and Cooling Bill

One underground development already benefiting from those advantages is SubTropolis, a 5-million-square-foot office, light industrial and warehouse space built in an old mine near Kansas City, Mo.. Here's a 2010 Atlantic article on SubTropolis, which notes that the complex's heating and air conditioning costs are 85 percent lower than they would be for an equivalent amount of above-ground space. The article also quotes John Carmody, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Sustainable Building Research, who touts underground construction's smaller environmental footprint and benefits to urban planners. "By putting more resources underground, you can preserve surface land and make a denser city," he says.

There might be some downsides to working in an underground skyscraper as well. Employees wouldn't be able to gaze outside and daydream, and they'd be insulated from the normal rhythms of day and night. A 1995 study of Japanese workers found that those working underground craved windows, even though the lighting and environmental conditions in their offices were similar to their above-ground counterparts. A 1996 study of Swedish subterranean workers found that their circadian hormonal cycles were different from those of personnel on the surface, and that they slept almost 30 minutes longer each night on average. Would Earthscaper's denizens, who would spend most of their days deep underground, develop an epidemic of depression similar to seasonal affective disorder? That's a question that probably should be explored.

Meanwhile, the Russians are planning something that's a cross between Earthscraper and the domed cities I envisioned in a blog post back in September. They've got a plan to build a clear dome over the massive Mirny diamond mine in eastern Siberia, which is 4,000 feet wide and 1,800 feet deep (that's nearly twice as deep as the Earthscraper would go). Inside, they'd erect Eco-City 2020, a solar-powered, carbon-neutral community. (Here's a Russian news story, which derides the plan as "more like a fantasy," at least according to the Google translation.)

So what do you think about underground skyscrapers? Express your opinion below.