PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Nano-cities

The nanomachines’ and nanorobots' population will soon increase by the zillions. Their operation will require an input/output system for the energy and material they consume, produce or by-produce, and a conglomerate of structures or facilities to organize, accommodate and make them function at ease. Society has provided solutions to similar problems posted by human activities. These solutions are called ‘cities’. Thus, our near future nano-demography demands similar organizational arrays.

Nanocities are the ultimate futuristic urban frontier. Its morphology feeds from concepts like Japanese Metabolism, Sant’Elia’s stratification of functions and Corbusier’s machines for living. Nano-cities are indeed another nano-machine. A machine for machines to live in.

However, its scale will make it unbearable to be designed or built using ordinary procedures. The need of a brand new approach is imperative. Building automation is the closest technology available nowadays that can make it conceivable. Though, there is still the problem of designing structures of such complexity. The proposal here is to organize the process the same way nano-mechanisms are intended to be manufactured in industrial scale: by growing them like agronomic crops. I call this process the “reiterated synthesis”. For all this occurs inside a computer, it uses pixels as basic building blocks, so it has a mere Cartesian morphology, nothing to do with crystallographic geometry found in solid molecules. But this simplification can provide a first glance on how to develop these structures.

The images could represent conceptual diagrams, but they are rather actual depictions resultant of the conceptual process that generates them. The color calibration tries to show how they'd look like under the microscope.

PROJECT CREDITS

Claudio Boyd. Architect. Central University of Venezuela, Caracas.