Questions tagged [architecture]
For questions regarding the aesthetic elements of construction and design. It can apply to any historical period or complexity level, from earthen mounds to grand cathedrals.
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What is different about nocturnal humans' European manor houses?
Edit: Originally I asked this question about "houses" in general, but several comments made it clear to me houses was too broad a scope. So I've edited this question to restrict it's scope ...
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Designing barrier to stop only non-hooved animals
We have barriers that stop hooved animals by taking advantage their hooves fitting into slats between metal bars/rods, meaning they refuse to pass the barricade because it limits their mobility. ...
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What are the best materials for an organic skyscraper one kilometer high?
The tallest structures on the surface of Earth are trees, which can reach 120-130m already. But I want something much bigger. In the setting of my magic-powered sci-fi story, humans use bioengineered ...
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How can an object pass through a building without taking significant damage?
A kaiju swinging its arm through a building, a superhero that, locked in battle with a villain, flies through several buildings, a huge mecha that uses its ax on a skyscraper, like a lumberjack would ...
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City planning underwater
In my world, there is a race of fish people and merfolk. For a brief description: They are a mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Luca. For pictures and extra description: What conditions ...
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How to build a giant city in a harsh environment?
In my world, there is a magic civilization. They are on a far away continent, but it is harsh and snowy. In the current time, they have now giant cities, the main ones being a mix of both steam and ...
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Maximum size for this dome habitat
So, humans have colonised this planet. It is of Earth-mass and volume and so has Earth-like gravity. They are now building a dome to accommodate the population. The question is, how big can they make ...
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impact of dinosaurs in architecture and settlement-building
The main idea is that a norse settlement and their surrounding is teleported to a late cretaceous north america; around 67 million years ago.
This settlement is large enough to have people of various ...
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What kind of public works/infrastructure projects can recent high school graduates perform in a post-post apocalyptic setting?
My science-fantasy world has been devastated by monster attacks coming from various enormous pits in planet . The first lead to a total collapse of civilization and the next one, some 300 years later, ...
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What would happen to enormous indestructible ruins after 400 million years? [closed]
Suppose you had ruins (and I use the term lightly) that could survive nearly any disaster and any erosion. How likely are they to be buried, subsumed into the mantle, or end up at the bottom of the ...
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How early can the point of departure for 2022 to resemble the great cities of Annibale Siconolfi?
Some time ago, I came across the artwork of the Italian artist Annibale Sicionolfi, and I am quite drawn to them, especially on how ecology and architecture are tied together. Art gallery in this link....
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Cities built of ice and compacted snow on a planet where it never melts?
Picture a planet where it's always winter all year (by that I mean that there are technically no seasons and it's always sub-zero weather) so the colonizers make use of the most abundant materials ...
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What city/town layout would best be suited for combating isolation/atomization?
I have a small modern nation that has many ideals rooted in the idea of community. Notions of civic duty, caring for neighbors, mandatory community service, mandatory voting etc. are the moral bedrock ...
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What would people living on rocky terrain with access to a river use as building materials?
I'm looking for architectural inspiration for a city I'm designing, and I wonder what kind of building material would be used by the inhabitants.
They live at the foot of a mountain, relatively close ...
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What will be the impact of stone-eating bacteria on human architecture? [closed]
There is a world, similar to ours, but not entirely.
In this world, there is a species of bacteria that eats stone. Actually, in our world, there are such bacteria also. It is called bioweathering and ...
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Is it possible to make mortar without lime in a medieval-ish setting?
The world which I am working on is set in the far future on a colonized/terraformed planet that has become reduced to a medieval-like level of technology. It was not previously inhabited by any life, ...
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How would you make a door that could still be opened a million years later?
There is underground vault built to last a few million years. The contents of this vault are all durable things, such as things carved in stone. Inside this vault is a door to an inner room. While ...
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Castle defenses against dragons
In my world, there are dragons that the people have to fight against. In many forms of fantasy, despite having the giant creatures, their castles still look like the traditional medieval castle. In ...
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What the minimum diameter/circumference a ringworld would have to have cycles of day and night and gravity Earth-like?
I wanted to know what the minimum diameter/circumference a ringworld would have to have cycles of day and night (24 hours complete) and gravity equal to Earth and what the speed of rotation.
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Optical telegraph that can be seen as far as 90 km. How?
You see, I have this world that has the same planetary characteristics as Earth, and the people of the Snoopish Empire are building an optical telegraph net.
The only problem they have is that their ...
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How long would it take to build an underground city?
In my fantasy world, there is a race of ghouls. They are a knit-tit community, and while they built underground cities, including reforming abandoned mines as living places, they eventually kept ...
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Suitable chairs for hunched, digitigrade lizard people?
My humanoid lizardfolk are 6-7 foot tall digitigrades, some have a slightly hunched posture like Gollum/Smeagol. I'm wondering what kind of chairs that be suitable for these characteristics as well as ...
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How to make a centaur society and cities believable? [closed]
I'm doing quite a lot of worldbuilding these days, and as of right now, I want to make a centaur themed civilisation ; rather than having the classical centaurs living in the forest kind of centaurs, ...
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On the best arch types for underground cities [closed]
I am working on a civilization that often digs into mountains, and I am wondering what form of arch would work best to hold up all the mass from the mountain above the halls. I know many arch types ...
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Is it possible for a palace to be situated inside a mountain side?
In my novel, I was planning to have the palace/citadel type place located inside a mountain- so like a sort of cave type thing, but on a bigger scale.
There would be decoration around the entrance of ...
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How would a community of people living in densely packed treehouses receive food to their treehouse?
In my novel, the characters live in treehouses that are practically piled on top of one another, so there is little room to climb down to pick up food, and it would be a challenge trying to take it ...
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What would need to change to make living comfortable in a world with limited cars?
My world is a futuristic soft sci fi with humans but not set on Earth (though planet is earthlike). In it, the world has been ravaged by a monster driven apocalypse multiple times. It has been 400 ...
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Could this city stand?
The Divine City is a truly massive piece of architecture in the shape of a cube
It is over 2000km on each edge, and has 4 sturdy walls, a thick base, and a light roof
It is densely populated, with ...
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Construction and architecture in a world with regular earthquakes?
I'm working on a fantasy story that takes place on a moon that orbits a gas giant, but is not tidally locked. I've worked through a lot of the other considerations of this already—the wider astronomy ...
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What kind of houses would giant creatures build?
I have a sapient alien species who weigh on average 4 tonnes and are on average 20 foot tall when standing completely upright. They resemble six-limbed giant sloths; they have an upper pair of arms ...
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Agriculture on a 15th century era Tidally locked Planet
What would humanity's most reliable method for food look like on a planet where the sun never sets, great winds raged across the land, and large-scale storms were commonplace?
I'm curious if large-...
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What could feyfolk use for lighting?
In my setting diminutive races like fairies, gnomes, and gremlins exist and to handle of the cooler climates such as in Europe and protect themselves for their many predators many of them live ...
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How would a city work to accommodate much larger and smaller humanoids? [duplicate]
In my story there's a rather highly populated city with multiple humanoid creatures with varying heights. I'm not sure how much this would matter, but the most common species in the city are humans ...
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How do I design a city to be habitable under a constant barrage of low-yield nukes?
In this setting, international treaties restrict the yield of legally usable nuclear weapons to under the equivalent of 1,000 metric tons of TNT (one kiloton). If an entity detonates nuclear warheads ...
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What is the point of introducing puzzles into tomb design if you don't want anyone to disturb whatever hidden?
My family comes from a long line of well known tomb designers and my spouse is a part time tomb raider, we really are a perfect match! I explained to my spouse that a tomb is a very sacred place for ...
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Urban and suburban architecture on a perpetually stormy planet
In a setting I'm working on, a raised megacity the size of Switzerland (roughly 300,000 square kilometres) serves as the last refuge of humanity on a planet entirely covered by a global ocean. An ...
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What shape most efficiently disperses an overpressure wave from a nuclear weapon?
One rule of architectural design in one of my settings is the prime number rule: a building that abides by this rule can survive a 2-kiloton nuclear surface burst 300 meters away 5 times in a row ...
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What are the advantages and disadvantages posed by the structure of an anti-nuclear hemispherical housing installation?
I'm writing a story in Generic Dystopian Regime™. One character lives in a housing block. This housing block is shaped like an upside-down (i.e. the flat part is facing upwards) hemisphere; while it ...
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How did King Ozymandias's statue crumble?
I was thinking about Ozymandias, and it struck me as a little weird that the head of the statue fell so close to the legs while the rest of the statue seemingly disintegrated into sand. Thinking a bit ...
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Restoring or recycling in a post-apocalyptic setting?
I have been wondering what would be more practical in a post apocalyptic setting, trying to restore the ruins of old (like refurbishing what can be restored and rebuilding over what cannot be and ...
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What are the requirements for a scenario like the one depicted here? (supertall skyscrapers)
I have been very appreciative of the Netflix series Altered Carbon especially thanks to scenes such as those taking place in the location called Aerium.
For those who aren't in the know, the Aerium ...
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How feasible/widespread would arcology/underground structures be on an highly tectonic world?
It is pretty much guaranteed that my world would have very intense tectonic activity, plus it would be about 23% smaller than the earth and I have been wondering how that would influence the ...
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My sapient race has the ability to fly. How would this affect their basic architecture? [duplicate]
I’m writing a fairy-like humanoid race that have the ability of flight through biological/magical means. They are in their equivalent of an early medieval era and are the sole sapient species in their ...
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What kind of house would merfolk build?
In my fantasy setting there is a species of merfolk who live in the ocean. They have hands with human level of dexterity and can live completely underwater.
I would want to ask a question about what ...
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Making a Functional Village out of Candy
The king of the gnomes is facing unprecedented levels of unrest across his lands! It is clear that it will take a grand gesture to regain the support of his people; so, he decides the best way to do ...
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Why would a modern city with a warm climate have a skyway system?
Skyway systems are predominately found in cities with cold climates, like the Minneapolis Skyway System:
But why would a city with a warm climate have a skyway system when it is not necessary for ...
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Viability of underwater palace built by merfolk
In my fantasy setting there are merfolk who live deep under the ocean and neighboring human civilizations nearby based on iron age civilizations like the ancient greeks and phoenicians.
I would want ...
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Underground Cities
Assuming ancient levels of technology, perhaps 2500-1500 BC, how would one be able to make a underground city like that of Kaymaklı, while having it be able to be breathed in and, is possible, have a ...
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Passive Cooling Techniques for Apartment Buildings
Okay, so I'm building a world with an empire originally based out of an arid/semi-arid (Sahel type) ecoregion. As the empire expands, it will eventually shift its capital to a more temperate climate, ...
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In a 12-Pointed Star Wall, Which Shape Would the Inner Wall Be for Maximum Defense?
In this generic scenario, there is a settlement protected by both an inner and outer walls. The inner wall protects an area of 72 hectares. Both walls are 40 feet tall and thick and made of brick. ...
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