In 50 to 60 years, your wildest Dune-inspired dreams might just come true. That's because OXO, a French architecture company, is literally constructing a vertical city in the middle of the Earth's biggest desert, the Sahara. The plans call for the building to stand 1,476 feet high and contain approximately 84,000 square feet of residential and commercial areas, amid other livable spaces.
"The idea is to make a city out of this tower... The idea is to obtain a building combining different programs including housing units adjacent to offices of course. There is a museum, a meteorological observatory on the Sahara, there are libraries, gyms, pools. The idea was really to offer a sufficient number of programs to be able to remain self-sufficient and not to have to rely on other buildings or have to create new ones," architect Manal Rachdi told Reuters.
The vertical city will also function as its own "livable, green ecosystem," with a towering central garden irrigated by rainwater. Work on the building begins in 2025 (you can see the plans in the Reuters video below), and is expected to be completed over the course of 50 years. Now, would the future mind hurrying up? Jeva Lange
The Week
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