Underground city design Sietch Nevada by Matsys

In the famous novel Frank Herbert in 1965 Dune, Describes a planet that has experienced an almost complete desertification. Dune has been called “the first novel of planetary ecology” for its forecasts of dystopia a world without water, where the few surviving inhabitants have isolated themselves from the harsh environment in what might be called underground oasis. Far from being idyllic, these shelters, known as sietchAre essentially banks of groundwater storage. Water is wealth in this parallel reality. It is carefully preserved strictly rationed with authority, secretly hidden and protected.

Although this sounded like science fiction to an alien world in 1965, the concept of a water-poor world is fast becoming a reality, especially in southwest United States. Lured by cheap land and the promise of endless water through the mighty river ColoradoMillions of people have made this area their home. However, the river Colorado has been drained for agricultural use both, like global warming, to the point that now ends in an intermittent drip Baja California. People who once supplied the river, have increasingly begun to create banks of groundwater for emergency use in drought conditions. However, as droughts become more frequent and severe, these water banks will become more than just an emergency measure.

Nevada Sietch projects the Water banks as the key to the future urban infrastructure in the southwestern United States. It is an urban prototype that allows the storage, use and collection of water essential for the formation and operation of urban life. Investing stereotyped patterns of urban Southwest scattered open programs, the Sietch is a dense underground community.

A network storage wavy channel is covered with residential and commercial structures. These channels connect the city with large underground aquifers and provide transportation and irrigation. The caverns are filled with dense urban living: a kind of underground Venice. Shaped cell, these structures are a new type of neighborhood that is the average of the urban network of underground workings and surface-level water harvesting, power generation, urban agriculture and aquaculture. However, the Sietch is also a bunker-fortress, as a protective measure for possible wars over water in the region.