Futuristic self-sufficient vertical city rises from the Sahara Desert

If we have to live in the desert, how will we survive? French architectural design firms Nicholas Laisné Associés and OXO Architectes teamed up to design a concept for a massive vertical city in the Saharan desert.

La Tour des Sables would contain living, agricultural and working units distributed across a structure that would rise 1,400 feet above the ground. One caveat? It will take a while to build it.

The building, which is a futuristic concept design, looks like a giant rock rising from the sand. It would function as a self-sufficient city that would have a total floor space of 192 acres and a vertical garden, while 20 percent of the tower would be given to office spaces. Rainwater collection system would harvest around 45,000 cubic meters annually, according to the architects’ estimates. Solar panels would provide additional power.

According to the architects, the building would take half a century to complete. Although the design doesn’t look like something that could be built in the near future, several of its elements are interesting aspects of that exist in some of today’s ecologically neutral buildings.