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  • FAQ#029 In your project new social mentality is introduced. What novelties in architectural forms and constructions does the Venus project offer?

    While some advocate the modification of existing cities and spend much time and resources attempting to update them, we find such attempts inadequate. Modification carries a large price in dollars and sustainable resources. Modifying and building on what we have means we must continue to support a combination of older systems' infrastructure and energy needs, their high cost of operation and maintenance, and their overall inefficiency, not to mention their detrimental effect on the occupants. It is actually less expensive to build newer cities from the ground up than to restore and maintain the old ones, just as it is far more efficient and less costly to design a flexible, state of the art production method than to attempt to upgrade an obsolete factory.

    To live in a world without pollution and waste, yet keep parks, playgrounds, art and music centers, schools, and health care available to everyone without a price tag, profound changes are required in the way we plan our cities and conduct human affairs. To support this new aim and direction, our city designs, industrial plants, waterways, energy systems, production and distribution centers, and transportation systems must be re-designed and operated as a coherent, integrated, global energy system enabling them to be safe, clean, and energy efficient. In this way we can use our technology to overcome resource shortages, provide universal abundance and protect the environment.

    In this society, construction techniques would be vastly different from those employed today. It would combine the most sophisticated utilization of available resources and construction techniques. Self-erecting structures would prove most expedient and efficient in the construction of industrial plants, bridges, buildings and eventually the entire global infrastructure.

    This would not create cookie-cutter cities. The notion that intelligent overall planning implies mass uniformity is absurd. Cities would be uniform only to the degree that they would require far less materials, save time and energy and yet be flexible enough to allow for innovative changes, while maintaining the highest quality possible to support the local ecology - both human and environmental. Utilizing technology in this way would make it possible for a global society to achieve social advancement and worldwide reconstruction in the shortest time possible.

    The circular arrangement employs a systems approach, efficiently applying resources and energy conservation, ease of fabrication and relative freedom from maintenance. The process of assembling entire cities through the standardization of basic, structural systems prefabricated in automated plants and often assembled on site, permits a wide range of flexibility in design and takes advantage of interchangeable units to permit changes for new and innovative installations. All systems would be of an emergent nature and constructed to allow the maximum latitude in accommodating change. This could permit the city to function as an evolving, integrated organism rather than a static structure. It is far less expensive to build entire efficient sustainable cities even in today's monetary system because we only design one eight of the circular city and reproduce it.

    The buildings would be so designed for easy assembly or disassembly. In this way cities could take on new and different appearances depending on their function. Each would be unique. This approach does not reduce the lives of people to a subsistence level; rather, it makes available all the amenities that modern science and technology can provide. Even the wealthiest people of today could not achieve a standard of living equal to that of a resource-based economy.

    Created on 21/07/2012 in TVP FAQ

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