A generational step beyond the “smart buildings” of the early 21st Century, Genius Buildings are self-contained, self-maintaining structures created using trillions of construction robots called nanobuilders. These nearly microscopic machines construct buildings from raw materials, following the robotic guidance of a central "architect module." The architect module also holds the building's power supply, main taps for water and utilities, and repair coordination. The building grows around the architect module, following a unified plan that is agreed on by the surrounding modules.
To make sure it all comes out right, there are only a limited number of building plans possible, and all the Architect Modules in an area are programmed to discuss the layout of their buildings with each other.
Common layouts include:
Tiers: These are building modules that are clustered along a street. They reach from one level to the bottom of the next level in a continuous segment, much like the brownstone blocks of old New York. Tiers are the backbone of most of Night City. Each one is a huge megastructure, much like a piling holding up a dock, with many openings and levels.
Roundabouts: These are buildings opening into a central transit shaft (see pg.134). They are connected by ramps and catwalks that span the shaft from side to side.
Suspensions. These are buildings suspended in transit shafts, air shafts or on ramps. They can be cylindrical, pyramidal or square, although cylindrical is the most common. They are connected on all sides with catwalks and roads. Corporates tend to favor these, as access is easy to control.
Starscrapers. These are buildings that are rooted in the ground, usually next to a transit shaft Starscrapers are incredibly tall, often reaching over 1000 stories. They are cities in themselves, often combining the work of several architect modules building on top of each other.
Cores: These are hollowed out, conical groundshafts usually covered with a metal or clear geodesic dome. Transit tubes and exits lead out from underground to surface terminals. There is usually a park at the bottom. Most remote towns are of this model, as well as all OLYMPUS arcologies.
Spans: These are living structures built as modules along bridges, dams or other horizontal structures. Transit is along the side or top of the underlying structure.
To make sure it all comes out right, there are only a limited number of building plans possible, and all the Architect Modules in an area are programmed to discuss the layout of their buildings with each other.
Common layouts include:
Tiers: These are building modules that are clustered along a street. They reach from one level to the bottom of the next level in a continuous segment, much like the brownstone blocks of old New York. Tiers are the backbone of most of Night City. Each one is a huge megastructure, much like a piling holding up a dock, with many openings and levels.
Roundabouts: These are buildings opening into a central transit shaft (see pg.134). They are connected by ramps and catwalks that span the shaft from side to side.
Suspensions. These are buildings suspended in transit shafts, air shafts or on ramps. They can be cylindrical, pyramidal or square, although cylindrical is the most common. They are connected on all sides with catwalks and roads. Corporates tend to favor these, as access is easy to control.
Starscrapers. These are buildings that are rooted in the ground, usually next to a transit shaft Starscrapers are incredibly tall, often reaching over 1000 stories. They are cities in themselves, often combining the work of several architect modules building on top of each other.
Cores: These are hollowed out, conical groundshafts usually covered with a metal or clear geodesic dome. Transit tubes and exits lead out from underground to surface terminals. There is usually a park at the bottom. Most remote towns are of this model, as well as all OLYMPUS arcologies.
Spans: These are living structures built as modules along bridges, dams or other horizontal structures. Transit is along the side or top of the underlying structure.
Do the Math
Genius Buildings are designed to operate independently, much like beehives. The Architect Module is the queen. A typical Architect Module can build a ten story building in about three months. Once the building is finished, it settles down in the basement and starts to bud. A month
later, it propagates four “children”—Architect Modules just like itself, that stump off on their own little legs (surrounded by a cloud of builder nano) to start their own buildings. This means every four months means another building and four more architects. Do the math, goboy, and you soon realize that in one year, you get sixty five ten story buildings from one lousy Architect Module.
later, it propagates four “children”—Architect Modules just like itself, that stump off on their own little legs (surrounded by a cloud of builder nano) to start their own buildings. This means every four months means another building and four more architects. Do the math, goboy, and you soon realize that in one year, you get sixty five ten story buildings from one lousy Architect Module.
The first month, New York rolled out two hundred Architect Modules. That’s thirteen thousand buildings. More than twice the number of high rise buildings in central Manhattan.
In one year.
It ’s been around fifteen, say twenty years in UC 0093. Increasing geometrically.
Getting the picture?
The construction wasn’t just upwards though. Once the nanotech builders had exhausted every scrap of the wreckage of old New York, they started branching down and out. Excavating deep into the earth for raw materials, the nanobuilders left huge tunnels and excavations, which were promptly filled in by other types of nanobuilders. Other nanobuilders diversified, drawing material off the seabottom and throwing the results up as spans over the water and along the shore. As the Drift Cities came to rest along the Eastern Coast, outrigger bridges were constructed to integrate even these into the mass of the ever growing sprawl.
To make things more interesting, pretty soon Chiang realized that the nanites weren’t shutting down once they’d finished a building. Affected by leftover radiation from the nuke, they were replicating, diversifying. They were even starting to cannibalize each other in a bizarre simulation of anthill warfare. The City began to grow far beyond the expected boundaries; in two years, it had absorbed every habitable structure for two hundred miles, converting ruins, highways, buildings, even exposed landmasses into miles of habitable City Space. It was even rumored that the nano stripped the bodies out of graveyards. That it absorbed sleeping people if they didn’t wake up in time.
In the end, Chiang went insane and hung himself from the highest tower of the City Center. But his creation lives on in the titanic megastructures that make up New York. (It’s also rumored that Chiang lives on as well; that the nano ate his corpse and converted it into the penthouse of the building he died in).
The Limits of Nanobuilders
Nanobuilders are specifically programmed to avoid certain extremes of environment; they don’t build in deep water and they don’t build on mountain slopes steeper than 30°. They tend to prefer flat areas over slopes, and well-watered areas over deserts. The result is that the majority of the Night City megacity is concentrated within a narrow band between the Atlantic Ocean and the Catskills Mountain Range. Mountains and lakes also break this profile up—the New-New York megacity isn’t all one big construction, and there are gaps in the superstructure that are spanned by freeways and outrider structures. However, even with these breaks, the overall design is that of one vast urban area, linked both horizontally and vertically by a bewildering maze of ramps, elevated roads, connecting bridges, tunnels and flyways.
All this building doesn’t come without a price, however. Although Genius Buildings are self supporting, integrating solar power storage arrays, water collectors/waste processors and other functions into the basic building design, eventually the building’s Architect Module runs out of raw materials to maintain itself. The building dies, leaving a habitable shell no longer maintained by its all seeing robotic manager. Other buildings start to cannibalize raw materials from it; the structure weakens and eventually collapses. When enough buildings have died back, new Architect Modules move into the area and start building on the ruins of their deceased ancestors.
