Project Indigo (working title): Design of a vertical seaside metropolis In december 2007 I sketched around a single theme for a while as a personal side project. I tried to envision what a huge -vertical- seaside city would look like in a world where dry land is very precious. This city would be situated on a huge pillar in a 'cavity' in the sea; possibly an inactive volcano crater of some sorts. I assumed a level of technology of western European countries around the seventeenth century. Naturally I had to take some huge liberties with the actual mechanical possibilities of these constraints to make a city in a hole in the sea work, not to mention a vertical city. As far as technique was concerned, I was not interested in creating pretty pictures, but I wanted to present a more or less solid approach to the theme described above. Initially I made many sketches like the one shown above. My principle idea for this city came down to a (somewhat) harmonious society with huge differences in standards of living. Because flat ground is so expensive, only the super-rich can afford to live on top of the pillar, where the climate is nice and sun-hours are plentiful. As one descends into the pit, the hours the houses are exposed to direct sunlight daily decrease, making house prices lower, which is why the poorest groups of society live at the bottom of the pit. However, people are not neccessarily unhappy at the bottom, there are still children playing in the water, etc. While there is crime (and more of it in the poorer/lower districts) it's a time of peace, not war.       The sketch below, based on a landscape study I did in World Machine, shows the colonial-style mansions on top of the pillar in the sunlight. Several dwellings have been built on the edge of the crater as well.     I tried to envision what the whole structure would look like from the sea. In the sketch below I also littered the crater walls with houses to see if that would work. I later abandoned that idea because I wanted to focus all the activity onto the pillar.       Next up: two shots from within the crater, at 100 meters down and 300 meters down, respectively. At 100 meters down, there is still direct sunlight reasonably often because of the large diameter of the crater. At 300 meters however, things get a bit darker, people have to rely on artificial lightsources (oil lamps and such) more frequently. The bottom of the crater shows much bounced light from above, children playing on the beaches, and massive amounts of structures on the pillar walls, as seen in the following sketch:       A coloured detail:     And lastly, I did a 'presentation' of the top of the pillar: