Swedish Firm Proposes City Buildings On Rails 223
Lanxon writes "A Swedish architecture firm that came up with a plan to roll buildings through a city on rails has won third prize in a competition to develop the Norwegian city of Åndalsnes. The company, Jagnafalt Milton, suggested that existing and new railroads could be built to provide the base for buildings that could be positioned differently depending on the seasons and on the weather. It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-berth cabins, along with a two-story suite, reports Wired."
Like birds (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Like birds (Score:5, Funny)
I feel sorry for the mailmen in that town. (Wait, wasn't there a building here yesterday?)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Spoken like a true computer scientist: One more layer of indirection will solve everything.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... "go about 4 miles after the paved road ends and turn left at the crick."
When you start describing your address with muscle ailments, you're in serious trouble.
OT: Creek vs. Crick (Score:2)
As defined by Patrick McManus [finefishing.com]:
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine the new ways people would live, and be shown on TV...
You come home from vacation, only to find out that your house has already gone south for the winter?
Your wife gets mad at you, and instead of throwing your clothes out in the front yard, moves the house without telling you.
Two neighbors start fueding, and instead of a fistfight, start bashing their houses into each other.
Survivor (what's it up to now, 856?), when you get voted off, they send you away in your house, pathetically waving "bye" from y
Re: (Score:2)
In the 1950's, the LA building codes were set so that homes could be lifted up and transported by truck to a new location should the land be required for a freeway or widened road. Even the streetlights were designed so that they could be swung out of the way.
Re: (Score:2)
Dark City [imdb.com]
One of the best movies of all times.
Re: (Score:2)
Especially this one. [google.com]
Unlike birds (Score:2)
The cities probably won't fall out of the sky dead.
Underclass = No Sun (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Hell, my whole trailer park is built on this revolutionary new principle.
Re: (Score:2)
your comment about birds made me think of Airships. Castle Wulfenback [girlgeniusonline.com] anyone? I mean it is just as impractical...see comment further down [slashdot.org]. Plus an airship would be freakin' sweet.
Re:Like birds (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still a dumb (albeit cool) idea, though. You can accomplish the same thing with older technologies far more efficiently and cheaply. Houses used to be built to the east of big trees, and indeed, often in a grove of them. The leaves and shade disappear in the winter when you need the sunlight. A central fireplace served to cool the house in the summer, etc.
I could probably heat my house all winter long with the fuel it would take to move the damned thing closer to the trees.
Aw Crap (Score:3)
Aw crap, now the extension cord won't reach!
Re:Aw Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
No problem, mate. We've got a couple o' thousand feet worth the flexible 'ose 'ere, and Billy over there, he's gonna put some duct tape on the joins, and your crappers will be up and running.
There was an old cartoon that had this (Score:4, Informative)
I can't remember if it was Felix the cat or Betty Boop, but it sounds a lot like this. The buildings were all on rails and moved around as needed, and people got on a stationary "train" car while the buildings came to them in a strange inversion of normal travel methods
Re: (Score:2)
Sure you can put those houses on rails, but now you have tiny houses and no access roads. Or - as in the cartoon you mentioned - they'd have to essentially move the houses all the time in a loop - you get off somewhere and wait as your destination comes along. That would make for very slow access, since each time someone needs to get to the platform or into a house, the whole movement would have to stop.
Re:There was an old cartoon that had this (Score:4, Informative)
It was Betty Boop and Grampy (I have that cartoon on DVD)
Wow.... (Score:2)
DHH's ego is getting REAL big! /jk
Growth in the Information Booth Market (Score:2)
Man, that would get confusing real fast!
Meet me at the restaurant on the corner of 5th and Main (except every other Tuesday where it's at 116th street and 22nd Ave).
Also we're switching to metric time so meet me at 75 minutes after 2.
Also, also, don't forget to put on concrete wheels for the rubber roads...
Cue the Ruby jokes (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, those guys can do absolutely anything on rails, and I'll bet it only took a few lines of code.
Re:Cue the Ruby jokes (Score:4, Funny)
With rails you can easily migrate your buildings.
Re:Cue the Ruby jokes (Score:4, Funny)
It is great for prototyping your city, but beware the syntactic sugar, it can gum up the line.
Re:Cue the Ruby jokes (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Trailers (Score:5, Interesting)
They could be even more flexible if everyone lived in trailers. You wouldn't have to wait for all your neighbors to move when it was time to pull up stakes, nor would you be forced to move when your neighbors get wanderlust.
It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-berth cabins,
Make mine a double-wide.
What is old is new again.
But can it scale? (Score:2)
canrailsscale.com [canrailsscale.com]
I win!
Mrecury (Score:3)
One proposed method of colonizing Mercury is to build a city on rails that circles the slowly-spinning planet, always staying in the shady site where temperatures are cool enough for human habitats.
With this story, such an idea doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Overpopulation? Forced? You really can't imagine one group leaving home to colonize somewhere else without being "forced" to do so? Perhaps you should review your history books.
All the places people chose to colonize before (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Great novel (Score:2)
Came here to make this reference :)
Re: (Score:2)
This imaginary Mrecury sounds like a great place to live. What happens when, lets say, the rail needs maintenance or is damaged and needs to be repaired? The whole population gets cooked and then new people can move in once the rail is repaired and get free fried chicken? Sounds awesome.
Re: (Score:2)
A Mercury solar day is 176 days long. That's leaves enough time to fix a flat.
By the way: you must be terrified of the Dutch. What happens if their dam breaks?
Re: (Score:2)
But what is the average solar day of Mrecury?
Obviously anything named after cury would be hot.
Re: (Score:2)
This imaginary Mrecury sounds like a great place to live. What happens when, lets say, the rail needs maintenance or is damaged and needs to be repaired? The whole population gets cooked and then new people can move in once the rail is repaired and get free fried chicken? Sounds awesome.
Park in the nearest tunnel. Sucks to spend that much time in the dark instead of perfect twilight, but it beats death. I don't remember if that was actually in the sci fi story, or some online discussion.
The other thing is that Mercury rotates kind of slowly compared to the earth. Anything other than a major viaduct / bridge and a crane is trivially fast enough to haul a train past the damaged track, or just wait until the track is fixed...
I would have to do the math to make sure, but at some latitude a
Re: (Score:2)
Work:
The rotational period of the earth is 24 hours, which is about 15 degrees per hour (360 degrees / 24 hours).
An average person can walk about 3 miles per hour [ask.com]
That means an average person can walk about 72 miles in a day (assuming non-stop, which we all know won't happen long term, but I ignored that). Therefore the circumfer
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except the day on Mercury is much longer than the day on Earth? or were you answering another question. I don't know if I could walk all that fast at such a spot as almost the north or south pole of the Earth either.
Re: (Score:2)
Why rails instead of caterpillar tracks? A rail line circling the planet would be ridiculously long.
Re: (Score:2)
Why rails instead of caterpillar tracks? A rail line circling the planet would be ridiculously long.
Caterpillar tracks are still going to need a road or road-like surface to roll on, like the crawlway at the Kennedy Space Center.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be infinitely long. You would need to be perpetually laying down new track in front of you, as the track behind you rotates into the sun and melts.
Re: (Score:2)
One proposed method of colonizing Mercury is to build a city on rails that circles the slowly-spinning planet, always staying in the shady site where temperatures are cool enough for human habitats.
With this story, such an idea doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched.
Charles Stross story? I read some sci fi story along those lines in the 80s.
Re: (Score:2)
One proposed method of colonizing Mercury is to build a city on rails that circles the slowly-spinning planet, always staying in the shady site where temperatures are cool enough for human habitats.
With this story, such an idea doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched.
Charles Stross story? I read some sci fi story along those lines in the 80s.
When I saw the headline, the concept sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it from. GP's and your post jarred my memory on the subject.
The Charles Stross novel is Saturn's Children [wikipedia.org]. Though you might be thinking of something else since Saturn's Children was published in 2008.
Equatorial surface temperature (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right (Score:2)
Sure, that'd be cost effective. All you'd have to do is build a planet-wide rail network from 70 million miles away. Then keep the part of the tracks exposed to the sun for months at a time from melting. No problem.
Here's a thought: if you want to colonize some other planet, why not pick one that stays cooler than, say, molten lead?
Re: (Score:2)
Let them fry?
Re: (Score:2)
Strike back - with laser satellites.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not that savvy on the melting point of various metals, but how would the rails handle the time spent exposed to the sun?
Float them on pools of liquid lead... "strong enough" once it freezes, mushy enough at temperature to prevent kinks. This was discussed in the sci fi story, or online, don't remember. I always thought the story made more sense if you ran the train thru a tunnel with greenhouses on the roof of the tunnel, so you travel along as you eat your food. Cooling would be a problem, but you'd have nearly infinite solar power, so ...
Swedish guy fucks with Norway (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Recycling old infrastructure (Score:4, Informative)
Quoth TFA:
The idea, says the agency, was to use the city's railway infrastructure -- left behind from the days when it was an maritime construction town, building oil rigs -- as a basis for its future. Konrad Milton, one of the partners in the company, told Wired.co.uk: "As we see it there are two major benefits. First, it's easier to put buildings on existing train tracks than to demolish the tracks and build regular building foundations. Secondly the city of Åndalsnes has different needs depending on season." ...
Why rail and not roads? Milton says: "In this case the railtracks are in such abundance that it's the obvious choice, but the idea with rolling buildings could work very well in situations where roads and other hard surfaces are in abundance -- like old military airfields, harbors or over sized highways."
Interesting recycling of old infrastructure. Reminds me of how Manchester England recycled a lot of its old inner city industrial warehouses and converted them to loft apartments. The population of the city centre boomed and and the already legendary nightlife of the city was given another boost as the place was gentrified. (Pity about the Hacienda nightclub though, it ended up becoming loft apartments too.) A lot of their old railways were recycled as tram lines. Trams running on the old railway tracks run at 50MPH which may not sound like much, but for travel in a built-up urban area it beats the hell out of anything you could do by road. The tram system (called Metrolink) combines that speed in the suburbs with the convenience of dropping you off literally at the doorstep of the shops and offices in the city centre. It's so popular that overcorwding was its biggest problem last time I was there.
I'm not sure if Åndalsnes could re-use their old railway lines in that way but this mobile building thing is pretty innovative and exciting. Kudos!
Re: (Score:2)
""As we see it there are two major benefits. First, it's easier to put buildings on existing train tracks than to demolish the tracks and build regular building foundations."
Then don't fucking build regular foundations. Drill appropriate holes for reinforced concrete pillars, then set your structure of choice atop them. Less roadbed to remove, the remainder can be left in place, and the valuable rails recycled for steel or even used in weldments.
Re: (Score:2)
That only accounted for a fraction of the total regeneration of the city. Castlefield, Canal St, Great Northern, Piccadilly Square, all areas that were untouched by the bomb. Metrolink was in place long before the bomb, and a lot of the area that was damaged would have been modernised anyway. (I'm glad the Corn Exchange survived, the Arndale badly needed a facelift.)
for after the fall of modern society (Score:2)
I'm assuming this is all for "after" the big apocalypse.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no >>>>>need to live on the fucking coast in vulnerable-yet-valuable-enough-to-move structures.
Build valuable structures out of steel and concrete, which are easy to recycle. Leave them in place for hundreds of years. If they become obsolete for some reason, abandon them if the land is not valuable enough to justify demolition. If the sea covers them, they will provide a breeding ground for sea creatures.
Whoever thought the "buildings on rails" idea had any merit should have been bea
Take it from an architecture major... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take it from an architecture major... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take it from an architecture major... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably the most insightful post ever (Score:2)
Well said, sir. As a practicing structural engineer, I see all sorts of very impractical designs coming from architects offices. It is somewhat amazing how elaborate artists can be when attempting to solve a problem. There's usualy some fantastically complicated, but elegant looking, solution which seems exceptionally cool, until you realize that for each problem solved, several more can be created.
I don't know to whom this is attributed, but it certainly applies to many of these types of ideas: Creativity
Re: (Score:2)
As somebody who keeps up with this kind of stuff (albeit often with a rather quizzical expression), you should just nod, smile, say "that's cool," and move on.
Pretty much. Even if this was practical, doable, etc, it's a major step backwards.
Humans are historically bad at identifying anything actually good. Computers were good, major step forward in technological progress. Pocket calculators... not so good, on principle of use in schools (think Japanese Soroban up through Algebra 1.. Algebra 2 starts graphing, that is where you should start introducing calculators). Electric guitars, amplifiers, and radio were good. Television was good, but modern news bro
Re: (Score:2)
And then you get into straight out stupid shit like electric carving knives, wtf? A vibrating knife to cut chicken?
Another application error. You cut leather-like ham with that, not "fork tender" barbecue chicken.
You also missed some economic issues... like the kcup thing, at work if your labor is worth a buck a minute, homemade coffee is terribly expensive compared to practically any other non-drive-thru solution, unless you're making coffee as a hobby.
Re: (Score:2)
We have drip pots at work that make coffee in bulk; and I can get french presses that make some 12-15 cups of coffee in 4 minutes. Trust me, sometimes you need the giant fucking french press; it's way bigger than a regular coffee pot, and sometimes I've seen people hit the coffee area and brew 4 pots at a time, rebrewing after under a minute because the herd just took away ALL four pots of coffee. In mugs.
Honestly, the 4 pots brewed at a time model is faster here than individual k-cups. Nobody has to f
Re: (Score:2)
Then, of course, are RVs.
And this is why we can't have nice things... (Score:2)
you should just nod, smile, say "that's cool," and move on.
Which, in a nutshell, is why this is such a backward country with appallingly boring architecture.
Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts
This is already a solved problem. See railroads for more info.
the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service
Also a solved problem: standard connectors, valves, and switches.
or the insulation requirements of a floor raised up off the ground in a northern climate
Every floor except the first in a multistory structure is raised off the ground. So now you have to insulate one more floor. Big deal.
Don't try to think about how much simpler it would be to achieve the same goals in a passive design.
Now there you have a valid point. That said, having mobile buildings makes it much easier to solve another problem with conventional cities: they're damn
Re: (Score:2)
Don't consider the long-term maintenance issues involved with the moving parts
This is already a solved problem. See railroads for more info.
Just because railroads can and have done it doesn't make it a cost-effective solution for houses. There are added maintenance costs involved, and when you start adding moving parts to a structure that's usually expected to last 20-100 years with the occasional re-shingling and coat of paint, you start shortening its effective lifespan.
the problems involved with things like plumbing and electrical service
Also a solved problem: standard connectors, valves, and switches.
Same issues as above. We can do it, and do it regularly with RVs, but most people don't want to live in RVs forever, and when something goes wrong with the blackwater tank,
one step closer.. (Score:2)
..to self aware cities that decide we are not worthy to live in them
just read Greg Bear's "Strength of Stones".. not his best but not too bad.
Choo Choo! (Score:4, Funny)
When they're going down the track, they can say "We built this city on rock and roll!"
I always dreamed of having a rail car apartment (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems like a gimmick, but I have a fantasy that might actually be feasible - not for me, but for truly rich people. The idea would be to convert old railroad cars into luxury traveling apartments. There is plenty of room in one of those things for very comfortable living if the interior is designed ergonomically. The way I picture it, cities could "beautify" some of their defunct freight stations into rail car parks - parking lots for luxury rail apartments.
Occupants could then negotiate transport of their apartment by attaching it to various freight trains at competitive prices. Moving freight by rail is pretty cheap, so this sort of "migration" might actually be pretty affordable once you've bought/rented one of these rolling apartments. I picture this working especially well on a continent like Europe, where there is lots of rail and lots to see. Next year, the rail tunnel under the Bosphorus [wikipedia.org] will mean that you can take a rail car from Scotland to the Middle East on standard gauge rail. If China comes through on its plan to build a railroad across Asia into Turkey, that would extend the mobility of these apartments even farther.
Of course, you could argue that shipping container apartments might be more practical and less constrained geographically, but that's just much less romantic.
Re:I always dreamed of having a rail car apartment (Score:4, Informative)
If you watch the original "Wild, Wild West" series (Score:2)
They hopped about in their personalized Pullman car: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_car [wikipedia.org]
That looked like cool living ...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This seems like a gimmick, but I have a fantasy that might actually be feasible - not for me, but for truly rich people. The idea would be to convert old railroad cars into luxury traveling apartments.
That's called "Private varnish" [aaprco.com]. Some people own luxuriously fitted out private railroad cars. Many of them can be rented, because they're not used much. Amtrak will tow private card around on existing passengers trains for a fee, but you're limited to existing train schedules. It usually takes weeks
Lutefisk (Score:2)
As someone who has spent a lot of time commuting on trains in central Europe, I would welcome this. If my office drove up to pick me up at the door. But if the train is only serving Lutefisk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk [wikipedia.org] , I'll pass. Now if I could only remember the name of the fish that they put into the cans, where the fermentation turns the cans into a hand grenade form . . .
If the train went to Bullerbyn, that would be fantastic. I could invite Skrollan for a drink. Skrollan is the coolest
wait, don't we have these already? (Score:2)
Trains have them, sleeper cars. There's even double story trains, so i don't see why there wouldn't be double story sleeper cars.
seriously stupid fucking idea, unless sweden has really crappy ground to build foundations on. but then, putting all the weight on a couple of points is probably better, i'm sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Middle class convenience (Score:2)
Just think how much easier white flight would have been with movable buildings!
Re: (Score:2)
Oh No! (Score:5, Funny)
Deployment nightmare (Score:2)
The Rails framework may be nice to develop on but deployment sucks compared to PHP.
They should stick with Zend Framework.
Obligatory South Park Reference (Score:2)
Simpsons did it [wikipedia.org]!
Rain on Parade (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, we'd have buildings along the entire track, except for one vacant spot.
If you're at the top left, and you want to go to the bottom right, and the vacant spot is below the bottom right...
[][]...[]
[][]...[]
|_|
Every month we arrange the buildings to form a picture of an apple or kitty.
Mayor Quimby figured it out years ago (Score:3)
Bars (Score:2)
Pick up lines could be odd.
"So, are you from around here... currently?"
Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Problems :
Using rail does not remove the problems you would have with the obvious alternate way : trailers. You basically have all of the disadvantages of using mobile trailers stacked with ADDITIONAL problems from width limits on a rail line. I'm not even going to go into the problems associated with mobile homes/trailers, other than to say that every single one I have ever been in sucked.
And another additional problem : you can tow mobile homes and trailers over gravel and dirt roads that are dirt cheap to build and maintain (pun intended)
Rail is VERY expensive : about $1 million/mile. Totally economically unfeasible to build the additional rail segments this plan would need to work, as well as to bring the old abandoned track up to code that this architect has in mind to use.
Why not? (Score:2)
Why not have a small vacation cabin sitting on rails, that can be hauled around according to season? Or an additional post office that follows the seasonal demand created by tourists. Or a police station..
The technique exists for moving things as well as for flexible hookups:
In the Netherlands they have house boats docked to facility hookups and a sidewalk next to it, complete with a flower pot and a mailbox.
In the US, they apparently build up to 2 level houses which can be taken apart in the middle,
Neat, an Ikea town! (Score:2)
ISO containers on flatcars.... (Score:2)
...would get the job done with tough structures that would be cheap, versatile, transportable, and settable by crane on permanent foundations.
That said, the reason container housing hasn't taken off is the form-factor of containers which is dictated by the form-factor of what transports them.
The idea of moving living quarters about urban areas basically for shits and grins is fucking stupid, there is no nice way to put it.
A bad trailer park. (Score:2)
It's been done (Score:2)
True story from my local area - here on the seaside the environmental laws prohibit any permanent buildings some distance from the sea, in order to protect the dunes from erosion or something like that; so pretty much nothing larger than an outhouse can be built legally. So, one guy installed a single section of rails (30-40 metres? something like that) and built a summer cottage on top of a series of railroad chassis to get around the restrictions - it's legally classified as a vehicle, not as real estate
You'd need some funky addresses (Score:2)