Building Façades
More Than Adornment
The façades for the buildings at Seleneca provide more to the City than just a surface of adornment for artistic expression, they also have a mechanical role in the safety for the occupants of the City. They provide the perfect opportunity to merge art and mechanics.
As you know, there is no breathable atmosphere outside the City. And the City is constructed by pre-manufactured modules of lunar concrete with metal reinforcement that are positioned on site during the construction and expansion of Seleneca. The buildings and the streets are separate building modules. The façades provide the physical seal connecting those to structures that protects our internal bio habitat from escaping into the vacuum of space.
Building-Façade-Street Connections
Although illustrated on this page as monolithic, the façade is made of various parts, some of which are premanufactured and brought to the site for assembly. Materials include masonry blocks, window units, emergency shutters and their mechanical and electronic parts, various metal parts primarily made from aluminum and titanium, and precast elements using SelenstoneTM which is a type of light concrete made here in Seleneca that when finished offers the texture and appearance of limestone. Finish materials include lunar bricks, locally made ceramic tiles, decorative panels either cast with Selenstone or an attached metal grill, painted aluminum panels, and painted stucco. The structure of the façade unit covers entirely the sides of the street modules and extend through the gaps in the street wall to the internal edges of the building module at their window and door openings. Here they engage the wall of the building with sealant technologies and thus linking together the two main structures and securing no loss of atmosphere between them. The emergency shutters will automatically close in case of a sudden aberration in air pressure or in case of fire. The emergency systems that trigger shutter closures are controlled by sectors within the city, not by the residents or occupants of the buildings. They are electronically connected to the citywide security and safety system.
The façade systems need regular maintenance to be sure that safety devices and sensors are working properly. All mechanical parts are inspected regularly by the Office of Facilities Management within Seleneca’s Department of Infrastructure. Upon finding any problems, the inspector will determine the responsible party to cover costs of repair and maintenance, either the City or the building owner.
The depth of the window and door openings is deeper than one would find in a modern building on Earth. The depth is primarily caused by the distance between the interior wall of the street module to the interior wall with openings of the building. This extra space helps hide the emergency shutters when not in use.
Once a building is situated on its site, there is not much flexibility with changing its design. However, it is not difficult to make alterations to the openings for windows and doors. Upon initial construction, if not already ordered by the future building owner, a generic façade is assembled in place before that street can be open to the public. Over time, owners can hire and architect or craftsman to redesign the façade and oversee its construction.
Window Alignments between Street Modules and Buildings
The view above is from the outside of two connected street modules (in light yellow) without any buildings situated next to them. The blue bands are the couplings that link up and seal the street modules together. The white elements are the walls and openings of the façade assembly. The openings in the side walls of the street modules are wide and tall to allow for variation in window placement, as can be seen in this illustration. All building floor plans must not place window and door openings where the structural columns of the street walls are located, because the street module is standardized for strength and cannot be altered.
Variety in Façade Design
The illustration above shows three example façades for the same building floor plan. One difference between them is that the two on the left have commercial fronts on the first floor, with residential apartments above. Multiple doors at the sidewalk work well for shops and restaurants. The façade on the right side is appropriate for buildings that are entirely residential. Its finished floor on the bottom level is raised above the sidewalk to provide privacy for the occupants. A detail from old buildings in cities on Earth.
Many Benefits to Customized Façade Design
Seleneca has many scientists but we are also proud of our many artisans who help with the design of the building façades. The design and construction of unique building façades for the streets of Seleneca has given us many positive benefits:
- The design can be adaptable to any floor plan, however there are some limitations from the structural columns that frame the openings in the street modules.
- The character of the façade and placement of openings can be radically different, even when the floor plans of the buildings are the same.
- We think of the façades as physical art. They offer our artisans an outlet for individual expression and offer pride to the building owners when it becomes a symbol of their identity. This is especially important in an environment that is continually becoming generic in appearance because of the limited supply of materials and economics that drive mass productions.
- The variety of façades from street to street appear to positively affect our mental health, alleviating the claustrophobic feelings that sometimes affect people living in a contained environment. The city feels bigger, even though you can walk from one side to the other (not counting the ports) in 10 minutes.
- One of the problems with a circular city: is that it easy to get “turned around” and then the feeling of being lost arrives. By associating specific building façades to specific street intersections, our population has avoided this problem, for the most part.
