

At 13,123 feet high, the massive, mountain-shaped building envisioned by Japan's Taisei Construction Company would overshadow Mount Fuji itself by nearly 700 feet. That's the equivalent of NINE Empire State Buildings stood one upon the other!





The building, known as the X-Seed 4000, is designed to house up to one million residents on as many as 800 floors! Designers have had to consider tricky questions of temperature and pressure differentials between the base and topmost floors, and are looking to utilize solar power to solve these and other critical issues. The cost, you ask? Somewhere between $300 and $900 billion... what's that, an Iraq War or two? Couple of manned Mars missions? Quite do-able - if you're Japan, one of the world's richest countries.





One might think the Japanese government would never allow the placing of an edifice the size of the X-Seed 4000 anywhere near sacred Mount Fuji, but Taisei's plans call for the monumental mini-city to rise relatively close by, rising up upon huge caissons sunk deep into the mire underlying Tokyo Bay.





Could it happen? Well, skeptical citizens of Florence, Italy, scoffed at Leonardo da Vinci's detailed drawings of helicopters and other flying machines. Yet da Vinci's dreams did take flight, centuries later. I wouldn't rush to put down a deposit on a unit just yet, but Taisei's outrageous X-Seed 4000 proposal has the same potential to fly high. (via Inhabitat)



Steve Levenstein

Japanese Innovations Writer

InventorSpot.com



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