Split Buildings Initiative: Ideas

[johnnie2 0]

Welcome to the Split Buildings Initiative (SBI)'s ideas thread.  ( Read about split buildings and the Split Buildings Initiative. )

This thread is dedicated to receiving ideas for new split building designs and content.  Feel free to post your idea along with any photo(s) or links to photo galleries that illustrate the concept, if available.  A more comprehensive idea description will undoubtedly attract more comments and feedback.  Please post any general feedback to SBI's commons/administrative thread .

[ardecila 124]

Eventually, I plan to BAT the Old US Post Office in Chicago. The Congress Street Expressway (which'll be either ground or elevated hwy) runs right through it. For some reason, the USPS decided to build a new facility 2 blocks south, so it's currently abandoned. It's real big (I'm BATting it to a size of 6x14).

Don't quote me on this, but I think it might be the biggest single unused building in the city, with Pritzker Pavilion being 2nd. Don't worry, though, your Sims won't abandon the building.

[Pooty 228]

Here's a very rough sketch an something I thought up of while reading the SBI threads.



So is it what you're lookin' for?

[johnnie2 0]

ardecila, excellent!  Your description of how the expressway runs right through the post office makes the building sound astonishing; I'm looking forward to your BAT'ed version.  Also, thanks for posting background information on the post office.  

 

I see you like the desktop image, Pooty.   The shortened SBI on ST slogan you introduced is rather catchy.

The design itself is more of a transit conduit over another transit conduit and thus isn't a split building proper, but thanks for the thought.  It shows the mind is beginning to open to the idea of a split building.  Continue thinking, and continue sketching!

[Quack 0]

I completely forgot about what you drew pooty... It is something SC needs really bad... wonder what else you'll come up with.

[johnnie2 0]

Here are split building ideas carried over from the commons/administrative thread .  Special thanks to the authors for their thoughts:  

Quack:

• a variety of split high schools (since having the same looking school would be far from realistic in the same town)
  
• split recreation facilities
  
• residential buildings with an arch on the bottom middle area where cars could go through... I think I have seen something like that in a European movie or an old James Bond movie.
  
• I thought of a semi big commercial building that has a rail running through it and a station where the employees can get on/off at.  I really haven't gone into too much thinking on it but maybe someone can think of some more stuff on that subject.
  
  
  

  A response from johnnie2:
  A commercial office building that encapsulates its own passenger rail terminal...mmm, I like the sound of this.  The idea reminds me of a certain building that appeared on SimCity 2000's box cover : see the orange building just under the UFO intercepting a rail line on its left side?  Now, we could simply say that the building is a passenger rail station---or we could think of it as a commercial split building that accepts a rail line.

johnnie2:

• California's giant redwoods!  Some of these ancient trees are so large and stable that a few have been hollowed out to allow vehicles to drive underneath; see this journal of a redwood forest roadtrip and this picture gallery of the Avenue of the Giants .
  
• Aruba's famous Dividivi tree !  These trees natually bow as a result of a constant breeze generated by tradewinds sweeping across the island.  Presumably, a large, well-advanced Dividivi tree could hover over a small street or walkway (as in the photo), or even a paved road or one side of an avenue.

schooner2:

• The class of split building that partially extends over a transit conduit.  The second class: a building that reaches across a transit conduit to meet another piece of itself on the other side.
  
• This is the Schuylkill Expressway underneath the 30th Street RR Station (which is next to the PO Annex building).  This gives you the idea of driving under these massive girders.
   
  
• This next picture (below) is just an example of what can be built above an highway.  In this shot it is only a another road, but imagine if it was a building instead.
  

atomische:

• The George Washington Bridge Bus Station , which is built over the Trans-Manhattan Expressway.
  
• Also over the same expressway, and an even more familiar, are the Bridge Apartments ... four 32-story apartment buildings straddling the expressway leading to the bridge. Pictures

Fairlane500:

• My idea behind this would be a set of universal skybridges that can be placed as a road/avenue/highway transit-enabled piece between two buildings, and that would extend out to each side so that it would go into, and visually join with the buildings on either side.  These lots would also be created at different heights.
  
  
  

  A response from johnnie2:
  Yours is a very interesting idea, Fairlane500.  Would a skybridge be placed by the user ingame, would skybridges be released as a collection of BAT models or props for BAT and lot builders to integrate directly into their split buildings, or both?  A prominent issue with user skybridge placement ingame is enabling the user to quickly choose a skybridge of the correct height: at what and how many heights do we build skybridges, and how do we allow the user to select the best skybridge without laborious trial and error?

  I do immediately like the idea of releasing a collection of skybridges of differing architectural styles (much like different flavors of other pedestrian or vehicle bridges) for inclusion by BAT'ters and lot builders into their split building creations.  I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this.

What are your thoughts and reactions to these ideas?

[lakeyboy 12]

This is a brilliant idea. I have 2 Melbourne buildings in mind which go over avenues.

1: Crown Casino One of the worlds most luxurious casinos. Opened in 1996, it has been one of Melbourne's main landmarks. It cotains a main gaming floor which streches over 500 metres, a 14 screen cinema including Gold Class, a bowling alley, indoor games arcade, restruants, designer shops, bars, nightclubs, a rooftop garden, a basement and multi level car parks, restaurants and cafes looking straight onto the Yarra River & 2 hotels. Crown Towers & Crown Promonade. Crown Towers is Melbourne's biggest and most luxurious hotel. Crown also hosts the Logies (aussie tv awards), the brownlow (Australian rules best & fairest) and the alan border (australia's best and fairest cricketer) medals. Here are some pics:
http://www.geocities.com/tourmelbourne/images/casino.jpg align=baseline>http://www.steamengine.com.au/night/pics/australia-mel-crown-casino.jpg align=baseline>
http://www.bucka-lassen.dk/flacroz/pictures/0622_4_Crown_Casino.JPG width=800 align=baseline>
http://pages.prodigy.net/wjake/image/casino.jpg align=baseline>http://www.maxbraid.com.au/images/casino_big.jpg align=baseline>

2: Southland Shopping Centre One of Melbourne's biggest shopping centres with over 300 shops and over 7500 car park spaces. It got a massive expansion in 1999 where the shopping mall went over the Nepean Highway onto the other side of the road. Here are some pics of this:
align=baseline> align=baseline>

[Murakumon 1]

I Think A Generic Skybridge Would Be Helpful, It Could Connect Buildings To Transit or to zones. Just make it pedesterian compatible.



It Could Also Serve As A Pedesterian Brige Over Sunken Highway Or Rail....

[cammo2003 20]

Heh, I was bored. Can't actually BAT anything like this, but it's a concept (top-down) for a large shopping centre that crosses roads. Got the idea from thinking about my local major shopping centre.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Or... we could have two lots, with a skybridge prop hanging over the boundaries of the lots, and link them together. In fact, on the Modular Air Terminal in the Airport Pack it does something like that.

[Mewwie 5]

Since we're talking about bridges and double-deckers, it brings about another question that really needs to be addressed (if it hasn't already) what about diagonal tunnels and bridges? ^^; I know it sounds silly, but becuase I couldn't run diagonal highway tunnels, I couldn't build the 256x256 city of my dreams.. Sure, it looks nice and utilizes the equivelent of two fusion power plants.. but if that was possible, imagine what you could do!

Also, what about underground highways like in boston's big dig with on'offramps the only thing visable until the highway re-appears? and possibly better shallower curves?

Ah well, it's just an idea.

[johnnie2 0]

Interesting thoughts, Mewwie, but Boston Big Dig-like tunnels, all-transit bridges, and double-decker highways are transit conduits in themselves and are not within the scope of split buildings.  I refer you to the NAM: Requests and NAM General Discussion threads for coverage of those subjects.

[I-will-crush-u 1]

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Idea.bmp align=baseline>

These bridges should be constructed automaticly when the road ect is near congestion.

Or plopped.

[johnnie2 0]

Nice graphic, I-will-crush-u.   

 

Ploppable skybridges between existing structures is a concept very worthy of pursuing; your illustration shows how a skybridge might connect separate, preexisting buildings, and Murakumon's excellent graphic posted earlier in the thread opens the way to skybridges joining buildings and transit stations.  Shadow_Assassin added that the Airport Pack's Modular Air Terminal does something like this, suggesting that ploppable skybridges are very possible.

 

I believe the next step is working out the (critical) details: at what heights should the bridges be built?  Is it possible to construct a benign skybridge whose style fits well with whichever buildings the bridge is meant to connect?

 

 

Also, I-will-crush-u, I find most intriguing your recommendation that the skybridge be built automatically in response to increasing traffic levels.  This would make for some breathtaking behavior in high-traffic areas like city downtowns: a flurry of skybridges forming between skyscrapers to offset a new tide of commuters leaving a newly-constructed condominium via the already crowded avenue below, for example.

 

Does anyone have insight into how this might be accomplished in-game?

[ExiL3 10]

Since I love split buildings, I wanted to show small picture of a split building in Bremer hafen Germany. Found this on the net so here is the original picture link: http://www.worldcityphotos.org/Germany/GER-Bremerhaven-mader-verlagde1.jpg

this is the same picture, but edited:

 

Too bad I dont have a bigger picture of the building it sel, but it I think it looks great anyway. much because the building splits the road in half... looks cool

[johnnie2 0]

Excellent find, ExiL3.

 

High clarity and quality, especially with your editing, and the building does look cool.

 

 

@everyone: What do you think about the skybridge concept discussed above?  

[Mewwie 5]

Well, I kind of feel it would cover both considering you could build and zone completely over said bigdig tunnels if you chose to.. and isn't this escentially what this thread is about? I realize it isn't a building persay, and it's not in two or more bits, but, it would run under buildings, accomplishing the same thing this would: reclimation of prescious land.. ah well.

[Kazeneko 0]

I thought of an interesting building that most gamers should know...

The Los Angeles Convention Center ! Good example of a split building, and would look down-right awesome in your city!

There are hundreds of pics on the net of the LACC so it shouldn't be too hard to get the details right.

[johnnie2 0]

Another high-quality shot!  Thanks, Kazeneko.

 

The LACC has a certain clean and modern look that brings out the building's attractiveness; the choice of cyan-tinted glass and white panelling for its exterior was a good one, IMO.  This web page on the official site shows the LACC's meeting room concourse extending over Pico Boulevard (to the right in the photo).

 

Official notice of the center's split buildings status is interwoven into the Design Features section further down the page.

 

Also, see the front exterior during the 2003 E3 expo and a grandiose side profile of the building ; pictures courtesy of Colin Fahey's 2003 E3 coverage (contains many hi-res pics, beware long loading times).

 

I am honored, Kazeneko, that one of two posts in your year-long+ membership appears in the SBI: ideas thread.

[johnnie2 0]

From the commons thread :

Date: 4/11/2005 2:57:23 PM Author: aleking

i was just thinking of the chicago stock exchange when reading this thread funny! that would be sweet and perfect example of a split building, hint hint please build someone with more artistic talent then me.

 

 

 

Nice, aleking.

 

An excellent shot capturing the distinct and alluring architecture of the CHX trading floor's exterior as it all but consumes Congress Parkway.  (Congress must be a particularly special expressway; ardecila mentioned at the beginning of this thread that a now-abandoned U.S. post office spans another section of the same road.)

 

Definitely an interesting perspective in the second shot; looks like we're hovering just above the tarmac!

 

Thanks for your insight, aleking.

[Ottooo 1]

This might be a nice idea for you guys: The Amsterdam Arena, a stadium with 50,000 seats and it has a road (in SC4 it would have to be an avenue) going underneath it, which also goes to the parking garage underneath the stadium.

Picture:


As you can see on the picture the road is on the left and on the right it exits the stadium and goes underneath a railway line.

Just google for Amsterdam Arena and you'll get lots more pictures, but this one has the best view of the road.

[____----____ 37]

yeah sorry i had not realized there was an ideas thread.

but thanks

[johnnie2 0]

, aleking.

 

 

Ah, Ottooo, beautiful.  I love the look of those curved girders up top and that concave deck reaching around the middle of the structure.

 

Thanks for introducing such a high-quality photo of the arena and its surroundings as well as providing background information.  I appreciate that a member of few words wishes to share a portion with us in SBI: Ideas. 

 

The Stadium Guide's Amsterdam Arena page contains a photo showing the boulevard exiting the arena before reaching the railway (or vice versa, depending upon driving direction).  See the fourth picture a little over halfway down the page.

 

 

Something about Ottooo's post highlighted to me the need to backup the photos and blueprints appearing in this thread, thereby allowing a graphic to be quickly restored in the case of an external link failure or other unfortunate event.  As a result, I've stored to my local system all split building photos (schooner2, lakeyboy, ExiL3, Kazeneko, aleking, and Ottooo) and concept drawings (Murakumon, cammo2003, and I-will-crush-u).  I ask that contributors posting new material join with me in saving a local copy to their systems.

[Kazeneko 0]

I've thought of another interesting idea for a 'split' building...

An old city block that has been turned into an open-air mall. Buildings could partially overlap the former road, full buildings could be built over, even outside escalators. Block all traffic but pedestrian to the former road. Possibly add an overlay texture to the former road to have it look like brick/pavers/etc.

If this doesn't make sense in words, I've found the perfect example in Denver . One street is the open air mall (16th Street), the middle block is all shops, offices, etc; and the buildings across the normal road is also part of the mall, connected with building-bridges.

Something like this might be better built in BAT as a bunch of seperate pieces that link together, so each piece would have plenty of pedestrian traffic, as well as stats.

I'd love to see something so unique in SC4, as I'm sure many others would as well!

[johnnie2 0]

Yes, I like this idea.

 

I like these thoughts because they offer a slightly different perspective on what it means to be a split building---like a breath of fresh air.  The city block turned open-air mall doesn't just reside over a network of roadways: it's truly built around the roadways, and uses that network to ensure its own survival and growth.  The network provides needed pedestrian traffic to the mall, and the mall provides those pedestrians a very interesting shopping experience.

 

Can you imagine walking into this scene ?

 

That has to be one of my favorites from the photo gallery Kazeneko linked in his last post: those second and third-floor building-bridges sweeping across the picture and off to the right are just excellent.  A multi-floor open-air mall with building-bridges might be the precursor to a more generalized set of pedestrian bridges connecting greater structures (high-rises and the like).

 

I also took notice to your mention of outside escalators, Kazeneko.  This interests me because it is similar to an idea I had about a conveyor belt reaching over a roadway in an industrial sector of a city.  I see this industrial area as being densely-populated, thus requiring the built-over conveyor belt, and somewhat dark, as if the smokestacks from surrounding factories, overhead conveyor belts, and airborne dust and gas were blotting out the sun.  A hardcore industrial area, you might say.

 

Outside escalators, like specialized pavement for the former roadways, are excellent considerations.  One would have to think a bit on how to weather-proof those escalators, depending upon one's need for realism.

 

Thanks for your thoughts, Kazeneko.

[vester_DK 477]

I was think of the Black Diamond; the extension to the Danish Royal Library:








There are three bridge over the road. Here is a picture from within the large one:

[johnnie2 0]

Beautiful shots, vester.  Very high quality finds, and they have some artistic quality all their own.

 

Mmm, seems just right that a dark building of rectangular design should sit upon such a platform overlooking the sea in that first shot, eh?  Though the Danish Royal Library main buildings and the Black Diamond were certainly constructed in differing eras of style and design, they seem to naturally go together here.

 

Excellent shot of a building-bridge in the second photo.   Nice color composition overall for that matter.

 

The last photo certainly catches my eye...it's as if the ceiling and the ground were reversed, so that the photo was actually taken upside-down.  An interesting hallway design.

 

Thanks vester!   *saves copies of photos to local system*

[vester_DK 477]

Well I thought about the black diamond again. It's in fact spilt perdicular to the road to. If you look at the top picture in my last post you see there are a different roof in the middel. Here is a picture from within:


The library is situated at the harbour.

The white building in front is also apart of the libary and is call the iron.
Most of the pictures is found at www.sml.dk

I saw this night picture, and just had to add it

Well if you are interested, I could go to Copenhagen and take som more picture. I like the yard behind it. It so quite, compared to them roads around.

[johnnie2 0]

LOL, exquisite!

 

The color choices in that first shot...

I do wonder why the curvatures of the balconies lack symmetry, though; as you can see, the shape of the railings on either side of the escalators do not mirror one another.

 

Excellent choice of the night still-shot.

 

You are certainly welcome to travel to Copenhagen to take pictures, if such is your desire.