Hexagonal House with Dormers.

Mountainside Castle

Originally used in Sherlock Holmes for the Richenbach Falls, this mountain-side castle would be a perfect location for the base of a secret society or some cool evil villian.

Firehouse

Modern bits of Architecture

Thomas Book's Loft

Mesa Settlements

The idea of a Mesa (technically a butte) is very alluring to me. It's a big tower of rock in the middle of a vast expanse of flat ground.

I have been looking at them for years and wondering, as many people probably do, "what does it look like on top?"

As some of the buttes have a raised 'skirt' around their base it made me think of the defensive constructions used in medieval castles. The raised area was to strengthen the tower and made it more difficult for someone to assault the base.

So then the idea hit me that the Buttes were sort of like "Desert Towers" or Castles in the Desert. Well, if you're going to have a tower, you're going to have people living in them. And if you're going to have castles you're going to have to have someone to protect yourself from.

This got my mind working but nothing ever felt like it was the right thing.

Some of the Buttes that I found may not have the best tops so I thought that maybe they could be tunneled into like caves so that people wouldn't be subjected to the harsh winds at that altitudes.

A butte with tunnels and caves would suggest a community. It would certainly take some sizable effort and food coordination to feed enough workers to hollow out such places.

And then, if I could tie a few of those buttes together (if they were naturally clustered together) then you could have settlements of several buttes as a colony or community.

See where I'm going here? It's almost like a Seich in Dune.
If you could tie them together with rope-bridges then you'd have a community that only touched the ground when needed.

And that left the question: what are they keeping off the ground from?

In Dune they had to face huge sand worms that were the size of several buses strung end to end. That seemed a bit too much. It's not like you'd ever be surprised by one of them coming. So long as you could just get out of their way you wouldn't be hurt by them but they might tear up a harvester from time to time.

However, something smaller - like this creatures from Tremors, would be fast enough to be able to sneak up on someone from under the earth and snatch them like a real predator.

One way to escape these predators (which can tunnel through the soft desert soil but have a tough time with rocks like the butte), would be to stay off the ground. Enter... a glider.

Though the only form of a hang glider I could find looks like a flying triangle, I'm sure that in a fantasy sense, someone could find a more interesting construction. How would they make it?

Simple: you hunt the things that also fly.

So I threw a Pterodactyl into this desert ecology and, of course, have to throw in herds of something that it can hunt; probably antelope.

The flying lizards could be a real threat to any kind of surface creature as they could swoop down from neighboring heights and pluck them from the earth. Also, they could be a problem for the mesa communities because the buttes would be their favorite nesting sites.

Their wing leather would be highly prized by the glider-makers as it's proven to be light and strong enough to handle the wind-sheer.

Antelope meat would only be part of these people's diet so they would have to find some other means to grow crops - perhaps on the tops of the buttes.

Design: Architecture

I have been fascinated by the number three for years. Triangles and the various permutations there-of have been a constant source of distractionf or me and I've never really been able to figure out why.

Additionally, I've been trying to design a small tower-retreat; someplace that could be built out in the woods like a cabin - a place to get away and think.

I've looked and sketched up a few hundred designs, but this idea combines the two fascinations; triangles and the tower.

One of the problems I've had with designing the tower is that a tower has limited space for the functional aspects of life. If your tower is 20x20 feet, the most you can throw on it would be three floors; usually two. That's only three rooms for a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, living room, etc. So I knew that I would have to incorporate several areas into the structure of the tower to make it a livable space.

With this design, I still have the central tower structure as well as a perimeter wall to keep out whatever needs kept out. The wall also allows me to have a garden or patio space that is outside but not open to the public. By extending buildings from the central tower in three directions (yeah, I had to work the triangle in there somewhere), I was able to create additional areas for the structure.

If each of the extensions are one story and the central tower is two, that allows me to have each one serve a seperate purpose.

1. Kitchen / Dining / Pantry
2. Bed, Bath
3. Living / Guest

The ground floor of the tower would be open to provide access between the other three buildings. The second floor of the tower would be the study / office area. With it being higher than the other structures, it would provide a view around the complex. Additionally, a deck could be built around the second floor so that you could step out on it or even the roof of the other three structures to create a second set of outdoor patios.

Though this design shows a triangular central tower, logic would suggest that it would have to be hexagonal as a triangle doesn't afford much usable space in this design.

A 'circular' stair (or a pair) that extends from the ground floor up to the 2nd floor area would tie the two floors together fairly well and I would work in a sun well to draw in light through the central tower into the heart of the structure at ground level.

Can you tell that I had considered architecture as a field at one time?

I'd love to find some cheap, 3-d modeling program so I could build just the basic shapes of something like this. My sketching abilities aren't the best but I'm still working on them. It's taken me years just to make objects even partially resemble what they should.

-T