What’s X-Seed 4000?

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X-Seed 4000 is a 4km high building designed by Taisei Construction Corporation, with 800 floors and a base of 6km. It would be built on water, have solar panels for energy, and be an autonomous city for 500,000-1,000,000 inhabitants. It would cost an estimated 300-900 billion USD. The design combines urban living with natural surroundings and reduces the environmental footprint. It is an interesting speculation for the future.

X-Seed 4000 is the largest building ever fully conceived and designed. It is 4 km (13,123 ft) high, with a base of 6 km. X-Seed 4000 was designed by Taisei Construction Corporation, a 130+ year old construction firm based in Japan. The design of X-Seed 4000 is meant to be an innovative combination of urban living with natural surroundings. Large sections within the building are open and allow light to enter. They could be lined with earth, which would allow for the creation of parks and other interior landscaping.

The gigantic X-Seed 4000 would have to be built on water to ensure its stability. The building was designed with 800 floors and is covered with solar panels for energy. Somewhat similar to the Pentagon, X-Seed 4000 would be an autonomous city of 500,000 – 1,000,000 inhabitants, equipped with numerous fast elevators for fire, police, and medical dispatches, etc. to ensure that large fires, if they do break out, are confined to relatively small areas and do not threaten the large-scale integrity of the facility.

If built today, X-Seed 4000 would cost an estimated 300-900 billion US dollars (USD), roughly half of Japan’s nominal GDP. That sounds like a lot of money, but consider that the International Space Station is estimated to cost $130 billion when completed in 2016, and the US military’s budget in 2007 was $530 billion. Either way, future advances in robotics and large-scale construction could bring costs down enough to actually make it feasible.

Even if it is nothing more than a design, X-Seed 4000 is interesting both for the scope of the vision behind it and for the reactions people give when they are first informed of it. For some, it’s the ultimate urban nightmare, despite the fact that the design was originally done to combine an urban structure with nature, similar to an arcology. The way it packs so many people into a relatively small space, building straight up, radically reduces the environmental footprint compared to conventional suburban sprawl. Whether structures like X-Seed 4000 are the wave of the future remains to be seen, but for now, they’re interesting speculations.




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