Week Ten: Basics of the Built Environment

"Make an image and describe a built space that is a significant element in your imagined world. Post your design or description on your portfolio wiki. Make sure your built space conforms to the basics of building and is consistent with the physics and ecology of your imagined world."

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Manteni Architecture
Manteni Architecture is reflective of the Manteni themselves. It looks fragile and beautiful but is in fact incredibly strong and durable. The Manteni build structures high in large, sturdy trees. These structures are made of thick glass and metal. Their forms appear organic despite being glass and metal. One can assume they were constructed similarly (and look similarly) to the Dali Museum of Earth, except with higher grade and stronger materials. These structures can withstand any natural disaster or outside attack. The buildings that are lower to the ground are generally residential. The higher in the tree the building, the more important. Public spaces and schools are generally around the middle of the way up the tree and then the buildings at the top are for social and political elites, or they are literally government buildings. Trade centers and craftsmen locations are built around their own trees and are always separate from residential/government trees. The same goes for military buildings; they also have their own separate trees, but the hierarchy of importance to height in the tree remains the same.

Design of the buildings can vary although they all have the same appearance from a distance, buildings of elites or more important figures will have decorative engravings in the glass and metal structures. Schools and places of work will have engravings of language pertinent to that building, perhaps rules, regulations, common equations, or other valuable information.

Blattodeain Architecture
Blattodeain Architecture does not have the luxury of being designed or elegant. Their buildings are purely utilitarian structures. They are generally large dome-like structures, constructed from metal, a stone like concrete, and then covered with hard packed earth and dirt. They behave like bunkers and protect the denizens from the common dust storms of the south and from the overall radioactive landscape. From the surface, these structures look like large unearthed ant colonies. Underneath they continue like insect colonies, being many connecting tunnels and caverns that are reinforced with thick metal plating and/or dense constructive rock.

In opposition to how Manteni building hierarchy is organized, Blattodeain keep their more important buildings deeper in the earth. There aren't really social or political elites in Blattodeain society. There are "government officials" and "important individuals" but generally all individuals are valued the same. The importance of a building is directly proportional to the contribution that building makes to Blattodeain prolonging of life/society. Residential buildings are relatively deep down. Bunkers and food stores are the furthest down. Schools are closer to the surface. Scientific laboratories, although very important, are the closest to the surface purely because much of Blattodeain science is focused on their landscape, so the closer to the surface, the easier access they have to their focus of study. Military buildings and arms stores are also close to the surface for ease of access and deployment.