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.
265 questions
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Not quite a dome, but...is there any type of developing tech I can use?
Ok....my story is set way in the future, but the tech is from the near future. In my mind, there is a geodesic type dome, or shelter, that is built to cover about 300 sq miles.
The covering is ...
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Underground city of 25,000 - minimum size?
In my world, 25000 people live in an underground city on Europa embedded within the ice.
The city's primary industries are exploiting resources unique to Europa (which in my universe is crude oil &...
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How would a village be built if its building materials change properties every other day?
Setting
This world is an Earth-like planet surrounded by many small magical "moons" in low orbit. Each moon carries a different magical energy and moves along its own orbit at its own speed.
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How could a city build a circular canal?
Within my setting, magic exists as a system of writing that has to be encased within a circle. Usually, these circles aren't any larger than the writer's hand. However, the primary villain of the ...
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What materials and building techniques would a Late Medieval-Renaissance city use next to an ocean?
I'm designing a coastal city (called Bruxport), and I'm wondering what types of materials and techniques would be used to help combat erosion, water damage, and salt build-up from damaging buildings?
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Could an average person properly live out of a 3x3(bodylength) cabin/house?
So I figured that, yes, a tiny person living in a normal size home would need or at least greatly benefit from their own house or hideyhole.
But with that out of the way, I wanted to figure how small ...
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General rule to spacing towers on a medieval city wall
I'm workshopping a medieval fantasy setting and one of the primary locations is a large port city, located on a bay out to the ocean.
I'm still early in development, but since this settlement is quite ...
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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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