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This work is about a fictional future where humans have built a space elevator, a vessel traveling along a cable that spans into the space allowing practical travels to the orbit. The cable, being the "Highway to Heaven" also supports some settlements. I concentrated on one of these, called Marina City. It is a city hanging at about a kilometer high above the ground. It serves as a center of entertainment in the cable. The project explores some current concepts or themes in architectural discourse. As we build larger structures to live in, very often ideas are taken from urban planning into architecture. This is where designing a real vertical city becomes relevant in the architecture scene of today. The project also touches on themes like Disney Architecture and Plug-In City. How to make a completely artificial environment habitable and pleasurable was answered by embracing the fake and using it as the main design language instead of trying to hide it away.

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Alp Ruben was born in 1987 in Turkey. He studied in Technical University of Yildiz in Turkey for 2 years and completed his studies at the Technical University in Vienna where he is currently active in Vienna in HD Architekten working on architectural design and competitions.

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