All Questions
Tagged with engineering architecture
22 questions
11
votes
4
answers
3k
views
How tall can a stone structure get?
So, I'm working on a world where metal isn't the most common, so what little metal they do have goes into building machines. The people of this world use primarily wood and massive granite blocks to ...
- 111
8
votes
2
answers
335
views
What is different about nocturnal humans' European manor houses?
Edit: Originally I asked this question about "houses" in general, but several comments made it clear to me houses was too broad a scope. So I've edited this question to restrict it's scope ...
- 319
4
votes
4
answers
296
views
Designing barrier to stop only non-hooved animals
We have barriers that stop hooved animals by taking advantage their hooves fitting into slats between metal bars/rods, meaning they refuse to pass the barricade because it limits their mobility. ...
- 13.2k
5
votes
4
answers
371
views
City planning underwater
In my world, there is a race of fish people and merfolk. For a brief description: They are a mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Luca. For pictures and extra description: What conditions ...
- 2,663
3
votes
1
answer
214
views
Cities built of ice and compacted snow on a planet where it never melts?
Picture a planet where it's always winter all year (by that I mean that there are technically no seasons and it's always sub-zero weather) so the colonizers make use of the most abundant materials ...
- 1,319
14
votes
8
answers
4k
views
Is it possible to make mortar without lime in a medieval-ish setting?
The world which I am working on is set in the far future on a colonized/terraformed planet that has become reduced to a medieval-like level of technology. It was not previously inhabited by any life, ...
- 141
32
votes
15
answers
8k
views
How would you make a door that could still be opened a million years later?
There is underground vault built to last a few million years. The contents of this vault are all durable things, such as things carved in stone. Inside this vault is a door to an inner room. While ...
- 3,506
4
votes
1
answer
601
views
Castle defenses against dragons
In my world, there are dragons that the people have to fight against. In many forms of fantasy, despite having the giant creatures, their castles still look like the traditional medieval castle. In ...
- 2,663
7
votes
3
answers
420
views
Optical telegraph that can be seen as far as 90 km. How?
You see, I have this world that has the same planetary characteristics as Earth, and the people of the Snoopish Empire are building an optical telegraph net.
The only problem they have is that their ...
- 793
4
votes
3
answers
962
views
How do I design a city to be habitable under a constant barrage of low-yield nukes?
In this setting, international treaties restrict the yield of legally usable nuclear weapons to under the equivalent of 1,000 metric tons of TNT (one kiloton). If an entity detonates nuclear warheads ...
- 13.2k
8
votes
2
answers
760
views
How did King Ozymandias's statue crumble?
I was thinking about Ozymandias, and it struck me as a little weird that the head of the statue fell so close to the legs while the rest of the statue seemingly disintegrated into sand. Thinking a bit ...
- 262
4
votes
4
answers
490
views
Restoring or recycling in a post-apocalyptic setting?
I have been wondering what would be more practical in a post apocalyptic setting, trying to restore the ruins of old (like refurbishing what can be restored and rebuilding over what cannot be and ...
- 1,444
25
votes
22
answers
7k
views
How can I make the supporting pillars of an underground city less obstructive?
Node is the last active city of the lizard people. Node was built to be a self-sufficient city and a nexus of an interconnected bunker system. It was a vanity project from the peak of the lizard ...
- 19.5k
32
votes
8
answers
8k
views
What do you make bricks out of in the rainforest?
Problem statement
There exists a thriving Bronze Age civilization in a gigantic rainforest, bigger than the Amazon and Congo put together. This civilization is built in on the flood plains of a ...
- 86k
0
votes
1
answer
163
views
What would aliens use as raw materials? [closed]
I just realized that on earth many natural resources used for building throughout history could be considered unique to earth, materials such as bone and wood are products of terrestrial evolution and ...
