Architecture in the Empire

[BlackSword]

I was at a conference this last week. The conference center was a heavy, dark place, with some tall hallways and rooms (Hynes Conference Center in Boston), and it got me to thinking about goverment complexes in sci fi settings.

 

Obviously the rooms and hallways have to be made wider and taller in order to make more room for the larger races in the empire/universe. In addition, in common sitting rooms there would be a variety of funrniture so that multiple races would have comfortable* places to sit and wait. In addition rooms would have to be made larger (taller and wider) in order to provide room for races which take up more volume and area. For those with special atmospheric requirements their might even be a special area where they could remove their SCBA equipment and breathe normally for a while. This would obviously cause quite a shock to someone who came from a rather homogeneous environment to see the mix of different styles (don't go in that room kid, the atmosphere is toxic).

 

In addition to these I began to think about different areas in a city for different races to live. Shorter races could exclude larger races from apartment buildings by building shorter entrances and rooms. Most apartment buildings and hotels would have different floors for a mix of sizes, shapes and requirements. Diplomats or ambassadors could have special meeting rooms designed to make a guest more comfortable, or decidely uncomfortable.

 

While probably subtely included in world and not required for gameplay (unless adding particular flavor to a chase scene) it can be used to add flavor and reality to a world. When some PCs go to visit a suspect or get information they walk through a 10'x10' door made for larger races to get into the apartment complex, but end up in a human sized-room several floors up to meet their contact.

[Hermit]

Dorlavian/Perseid Architecture ideas

 

Nice ideas. If you don't mind me drifting from just government architecture for a moment, I think another factor to take into account is definitely religious/cultural beliefs. For example, the Dorvalians (Perseids) religion is a six god polytheistic faith. If a GM wanted to extrapolate from that, one could have many major building designs be hexagons. The number six might feature promiently in patterns.

 

One could reverse that, of course, and say that because of the sacredness hex designs would be used only for places of worship, but even that choice would shape the building plans.

 

Sticking with the Dorlavians for a moment, one should also take racial strengths into account. Because the Dorlavians have natural sight flash defense and energy resistance, a GM could also incorporate that. Imagine chambers of high polished almost blindling (to non Perseid) crystal where the Dorlavans come to relax or meditate. After all, Perseid mating cycles are triggered during the darker fall season... a dimly lit building might be the same as hanging out a red lantern. Bound to get you worked up.

 

For that matter, imagine walls with very low level currents of energy cruising through them. Other races might risk getting burned or shocked, but Perseid would just run hands over the surfaces enjoying that 'tingling' sensation. Devious Dorvalan designers might even use this as a subtle (or not subtle) way of discouraging non-Perseid from wandering too deep into complexes restricted to "authorized personel".

 

Couple that with the art of Etch Sketching on soft materials (no doubt, many of which could harden quickly after the work is done) and you have some very unusal architecture indeed.

[Victor]

A few more things to think about, perhaps...

 

Colors probably have different psychological effects on alien races, and perhaps more immediately noticeable ones. This could have a signicifcant impact on the materials they choose, as well as how they decorate.

 

For example, species with UV vision might become depressed in areas with lots of low-wavelength colors (or even irritable). The same might be IR-sensitive races in areas with lots of high-wavelength colors.

 

Species with heat sense might have a very strong preference for organic materials, as opposed to stark metal and plastic surfaces.

 

Texture may be particularly important to races with ultrasonic and subsonic hearing, along with anything else that affects acoustics. Right angles and/or paralell walls would probably be few and far between, spherical rooms would be right out.

 

Non-carbon based lifeforms might have allergies to some typical building materials as well, even if not to the point of qualifying for a Disadvantage. A copper-based organic life form, for example, might get lead-poisoning-like symptoms from extensive contact with zinc or magnesium bearing alloys.

[Hermit]

Fuschia Star ports, here we come.

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by Hermit

Fuschia Star ports, here we come.

It's not the color; it's how you accessorize.

[Dark Cloud]

Colors

 

A cool thing about using different visions (i.e. infrared, uv...) is that alien races without that particular vision won't notice things. In a campaign I used to run, I had the interior of a starship use different wavelength signs and lines. The lines were used to get to different parts of ship. To the characters, it was a featureless ship. Just corridors and doors.

 

DC

[Hermit]

I like that idea Dark Cloud. It could be a logical reason for a sci fi version of the dungeon crawl (When/if you're in the mood for that). To the aliens , it's all well organized, but to our heroes who can not see the samewavelengths, it's a chaotic labryinth.

[Ranxerox]

Effects of new building materials

 

The building materails available to a people to a large extent dictate the sort of buildings that they make. As new building materials and construction techniques become avaialabe they will change the face of architecture.

 

While my players don't know it yet (ssshhh, don't tell them), they are going to stage a raid on a building that looks like a humongous fruit tree. It starts off as a central trunk and branches out higher up eith each apartment looking from the outside like a giant shining piece of golden fruit.

 

Currently it would be pretty much impossible to make a buliding that starts off so narrow and then becomes wider. It would also be quite a challenge to get people to their apartments. However thanks to the stronger building materials avalilabe in the 27th century and hover elevators, the building becomes possible and almost practical. Though it remains somewhat tacky.

[BlackSword]

Re: Effects of new building materials

 

I had let the effects of building materials pass me by. As steel brought the age of skyscrapers, new building materials could greatly change buildings.

 

A few decades ago during the cubist movement there was an idea to make all buildings based on cubists designs. While odd looking, part of the idea was to give every room a window to the outside world. This may be less odd in a future setting. I will see if I can find a pic and post it.

 

Has anyone seen the shows on Discovery channel about engineering super structures. Two come to mind. One I saw was an idea to build a ship that was the size of a small city, I believe it was about one mile long, long enough for a decent size aircraft to land on it with out cable arresters. It was meant to house several tens of thousands and float around on the high seas.

 

The second was a design by a Japanese firm to build a large hollow pyramid made up of smaller pyramids. Each of these small pyramids would be large enough to house several large buildings so that you basically stacked cities on top of each other. All of the transit was done through mass transit systems.

 

The technology for both of these ideas is available (though the plans push the limits), but of course financing and need is not. Both these ideas can also be stolen for future structures. The ship could be an ultra large space faring vessel which people live and work on, giving up planetary life to live amount the space lanes. The pyramid city could be placed as a capital of planet (or right where it is planned in Tokyo's harbor), or could be an idea for a interconnected fleet of ships traveling as a city, but able to break up to be more manueverable.

 

Few more thoughts for the fire.

[Lupus]

Architecture is a very difficult thing to do with alien races. The only harder thing is... well.. what they look like. Everything we come up with is affected by our terrestrial origins, and something truly outside the box is... it's either something you can't communicate with, or it's not truly alien to our minds.

 

That said. When designing architecture for an alien culture (whether sci-fi or fantasy), I think about the purpose, and try to think how things would shape real-world architecture. Personally, I steer clear of obvious Star-Trekky things, like incorporating the culture's symbol into everything. For example - while some buildings here incorporate elements like that, you don't see many Christian homes built like crosses - churches are, but homes and other buildings tend not to be. The insane rush to have everything shaped the same may lend a uniformity to the design, but kinda throws me out of the right headspace.

 

Are houses designed with defence in mind? Do they conspicuously display technology/wealth? Are they designed for more than one species? Do they seek to impress visitors, or to appear humble? Are they concerned with external appearance, or functionality? Is convenience important, or do they want you to have to work out to get around? What are the building materials, anyway? (For my sorta-middle-eastern fantasy setting, I make a point of reminding people that most of the buildings are adobe.)

 

For homes: Is comfort primary? Do guests ever come to the house? Where are they entertained? Is there a separate entrance for them, or a 'guest entertaining room'? Are views prized? Are houses for single families, or do multiple families share? Does this society have families at all? If so, how big are these families? (An extended family structure could easily lead to apartment-block-sized houses for a single clan.)

 

Victor and Dark Cloud bring attention to colour - another great idea. How alien beings perceive light is kinda important. As is how well they see. A species that hears better than it sees will pay attention to acoustics more than visual aesthetics. I can imagine fairly bare rooms, but with rounded corners that reflect sound well. And, if buildings are designed with defence in mind, and the race in question can see wavelengths that most races they know can't, they may well have emergency lighting in that wavelength, and blackout shutters to shut out any other sources of light.

 

Blacksword has a good idea about checking out real-world architecture. That Japanese city concept is way out there, and nothing I'd come up with on my own. But I'll have to steal it some day. To get other weird ideas, look at some alterno or retro architecture books. Things like open-plan rooms (why cut people off from contact with one another? They should all see each other, all the time!), houses without corridors (interconnected rooms only - from what I'm told, to get to the King's bedroom at Versailles, you had to go through at least a half-dozen other bedrooms), small compartment rooms off a single circular hub (kinda like spokes on a wheel), ones that are entirely constructed from a single material (concrete was popular in the 70s), architectural feats (houses entirely suspended on wires)... the list goes on. Any number of them coudl be adapted for aliens.

 

But my primary thing is that buildings should be practical - or if they aren't practical, there should be a reason. 'I wanted something alien, so I put in all kinds of wiggly corridors that mess up the flow through the building, but make it look ALIEN' is, to me, weak. 'This race is full of dumbasses who care more about aesthetic lines/impressive the rubes/tossing off than an actually usable building design' is an acceptible reason, and says something about the race in qustion.

 

Though, sometimes, a few impractical things can help define an architectural style. Take all the horrible plunge-off-the-edge-into-an-impossibly-deep-abyss platforms in Star Wars. A galaxy that definitely never had any injury-claim lawyers.

 

Or, y'know, Darth killed 'em all.

[BobGreenwade]

Turning back to sensory matters, there are senses to consider other than vision.

 

At the top of the list is senses we don't even have. Several real-life species of fish and insects (along with a few mammals and larval amphibians) have electrosense -- the ability to detect electrical impulses in their environment. This is how sharks, catfish, deep-sea creatures, and various others recognize prey (though the sharks also use vision and smell) and navigate through dark or murky waters. (Some species even use electrosense to communicate -- though that's a subject for another thread.)

 

An electrosensitive species (and I'd add some level of electrosense to the Osathri and Se'ecra at least, not to mention other ichthyoid and insectoid species in the TE setting) might avoid the use of metal, or use metal for special identification purposes such as to identify "do not enter" areas.

 

I'm not aware of any magnetic senses in real life, but it's a possibility with similar application.

 

If a species uses echolocation, it might build structures with large open spaces, and/or avoid the use of long, straight corridors.

 

Choice of building materials can also be affected by the species' sense of smell. If it doesn't have one, maybe it uses manure or other substances we'd consider foul. If its smell is extremely acute, it might use materials with olfactory properties that we'd equate to aroma therapy.

 

That's just a few thoughts on my part....