7Gems (Patreon)

This started out as just an exercise to paint a dystopian cityscape, but in the process of actually painting this, I mentally filled in a bunch of backstory for my world. I've been having trouble actually writing lately (I'm terribly out of practice for one thing), but bizarrely, if I just sit down and pound out some artwork, it helps me figure things out.

I'll write a more complete description of this at some point, but basically:

7Gems is a collection of seven towers originally envisioned as low income housing and urban development. The project was notable for being the first fully AI developed and built project. This accounts for its unconventional design which follows no prior art or traditions in architecture or engineering. The buildings are monolithic, imposing, and grotesque yet simultaneously exposed and apparently haphazard. Engineers who've studied the construction attest that the buildings are stable, despite making use of completely novel and untested load distribution techniques, and looking spindly and top-heavy. Normally enclosed infrastructure such as plumbing or electrical runs were routed both on the interior and the exterior, giving rise to thousands of pipes, cables, exposed beams, drainage channels and other elements wrapped around the outsides of the buildings. The interiors are likewise baffling: a maze of corridors and stair wells, hundreds of rooms with no windows but lit with light pipes, or individual open plan apartments containing no interior walls despite spanning thousands of square feet.

The artificial intelligence was so efficient in procuring and assembling materials, that by the time the first dozen floors had been constructed and could be examined, at least fifty more were already well underway. The project was halted, but the structures were habitable, if not appealing. Engineers surmised the unenclosed facades and exposed latticework would have eventually been filled in as the AI completed the structures, although no one can really say for sure. After some debate, 7Gems was scheduled to be torn down. However, due to the complexity of the structures and the unconventional nature of their construction, it was deemed too dangerous to use explosives for controlled demolition. There were too many unknowns to guarantee a controlled collapse. The only safe way to dismantle them was to do it one floor at a time, starting at the top and working down.

Before this work could commence, thousands had already moved into the space, claiming distant warrens or penthouse balconies as their permanent residence. The housing units currently exist in a quasi-legal state, where on the uppermost floors, deconstruction crews have already begun working to pull down the buildings while on the floors below, people continue with their lives. The postal service dutifully delivers mail addressed to 7Gems despite it not officially existing, the police patrol the complex—it makes for an easy way to hit quotas—and the electrical company keeps the lights on as long as bills are paid for the active meters.