African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 903 Rhine Palace

Of course, compared to the People's Parliament Building of the East African Empire, the most important building in the entire Rhine City is obviously the new royal palace in East Africa - the Rhine Palace.

The design of the Rhine Palace is currently still in progress. Unlike the Empire State Building, which has already started construction, Ernst naturally paid special attention to it as his future residence and had many requirements.

“This time the design of the Rhine Palace does not focus on the palace, but in the garden, it pays attention to the Feng Shui pattern to create a harmonious coexistence between man and nature, and to combine the east and west.”

This is Ernst's original words. In Ernst's view, it is enough to have a landmark palace. There is no need to win in scale and quantity, such as building a complex of buildings as numerous as the Forbidden City or a palace like the Palace of Versailles. A huge single palace building.

Take the Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City as examples. Versailles covers an area of ​​more than 1.1 million square meters, while the Forbidden City is actually a complex of buildings covering an area of ​​1.43 million square meters and a construction area of ​​21.8 million square meters. Forty thousand square meters.

From the data, the later Palace of Versailles seems to be larger than the Forbidden City. In fact, the Palace of Versailles added a huge garden area, while the Forbidden City is only the area of ​​the current Far Eastern Royal Inner City.

However, Ernst personally did not like European gardens because the planning was too regular and focused on geometric shapes. Taking the gardens of the Palace of Versailles as an example, it has the feeling of being a city park in the Far Eastern Empire in later generations.

So Ernst hoped that the gardens of the Rhine Palace would conform to the topography of the Rhine City, integrate with nature, and be "chaotic".

So this time the design of the Rhine Palace was not entirely realized by Western designers like the previous design of the Svet Palace. Instead, a group of garden designers were borrowed from the Far Eastern Empire to realize the design of the Rhine Palace.

And considering the amount of precipitation, the overall precipitation in Rhine City is more than 800 millimeters, which is right between the north and south of the Far Eastern Empire.

 This is the overall characteristic of the Rhine Palace in the garden. According to Ernst's requirements, plus the garden area, the final area of ​​the Rhine Palace only reached about 300,000 square meters, which is not much different from the palaces of most countries in the world.

This will appear to be incompatible with East Africa as a whole. Of course, northern garden design pays attention to strict rules, neat layout, symmetry, and more use of central axis and scenery.

  But this is only the overall land area, including gardens, not the building area. Ernst’s expected upper limit of building area is only 50,000 square meters. This is only the upper limit, which means that the final effect may be less than 50,000 square meters.

Secondly, adopt the eclectic layout of southern gardens and try to design it according to the local natural environment and river topography.

 In the design of the Rhine Palace gardens, the main reference was the northern gardens of the Far Eastern Empire. First of all, the talents in the hands of the Far Eastern Empire government were relatively concentrated. There were a large number of royal gardens and private gardens in the north, and there was no doubt about their professionalism.

 However, the overall effect is more similar to the characteristics of the northern gardens of the Far Eastern Empire. The biggest difference between the two is that there is no obvious winter in East Africa, so the vegetation will not change much with the seasonal changes.

Therefore, it is not realistic to build "small bridges and flowing water" in the Rhine City. Secondly, the overall atmosphere of the royal palace also tends to be solemn, solemn, and grand, while southern gardens are more delicate, complex, and subtle.

The Rensemfowa River is a tributary of the Luangwa River, a tributary of the Zambezi River. In fact, there are many tributaries on both sides of the river. The Rhine Palace will use these small rivers to realize the garden layout of the Rhine Palace.

This is also undesirable for Ernst, as it is too rigid, so the garden design of the Rhine Palace is actually to integrate the different characteristics of the West and the East.

This scale can only be regarded as quite satisfactory among palaces around the world, but it is also nearly twice the size of the Svet Palace in the first town.

 In the final analysis, the Rhine Palace that Ernst expected was just a palace in a garden, not even as large as some universities.

However, this is also a disguised manifestation of the "frugal" spirit of the East African royal family. Unlike many European countries now, which make the palaces magnificent and large-scale, and there are more than one. For example, the famous Palace of Versailles in France, the Louvre, and the Maple Palace Dambelu Palace and Elysee Palace are not bad either. Austria also has the Winter Palace and the Summer Palace. For example, Schönbrunn Palace is the Summer Palace, and the Winter Palace is the Hofburg Palace.

 There was only one royal palace in East Africa before, the Sweet Palace, and the scale was relatively small. Of course, the climate in East Africa also determined that it was impossible to have a winter palace and a summer palace in East Africa.

 …

The overall architectural construction of the Rhine City obviously started from the administrative area. As mentioned before, the overall construction can be divided into three parts, namely the palace area, the national administrative center area, and the city central administrative area.

 The palace area is closely connected with the national administrative center area, while the city central administrative area, the Rhine City Government, is close to the city planning center.

Of course, in terms of transportation accessibility, although the national administrative center is not in the center of the Rhine city, it is no worse than the Rhine city government.

East Africa is preparing to build three railways to directly connect the Rhine City with Kabwe, New Frankfurt and Tete.

That's right, the railway along the Zambezi River will eventually pass through the first town and then connect to the New Frankfurt City. After all, as the capital of East Africa, the Rhine City does not assume the main transportation hub function.

 But the Rhine City must be a transportation hub city. Simply put, the railways passing through the Rhine City should be given priority to officials, civil servants, the army, students and Rhine citizens.

 The intensity of use of the two is different. To put it bluntly, New Frankfurt City does rough work, while Rhine City does "noble" work.

At present, Rhine City is a large construction site, with priority given to basic transportation such as railways and highways. Even subways and civil air defense projects have corresponding plans.

This point is relatively advanced. After all, no aircraft have appeared during the current period, let alone so-called bombers that can threaten the airspace of East Africa.

Even if there are planes, the location of Rhine City in the hinterland of East Africa means that it is difficult to fight here. After all, enemy planes can fly here, which only means that East Africa is definitely not going to work.

As for subways, they are nothing new. Britain built the world’s first subway as early as 1863, and there were no major technical problems.

Of course, East Africa is now only building tunnels first, which is relatively easy for the Rhine City, which is completely building high-rise buildings from the ground.

 At this time, only the United Kingdom has a subway, and East Africa may be the second or third country in the world with subway access.

Because the other countries that built railways at the same time as East Africa were the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary (opened in 1896) planned the first subway. In order to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Hungary, the United States also had related plans, but it was later (opened in 1897). .

Of course, the progress in East Africa may be faster. After all, the construction difficulty is relatively weak. Now the Rhine City is a blank slate, so the construction difficulty is also relatively low. Subway construction in other countries is built in existing cities and relatively prosperous areas. This requires There are also more disadvantages to consider.

Of course, even if the construction is completed, it will take a long time to open it. After all, the current Rhine City is completely a "ghost city".

The first subway in East Africa, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, used electricity as its main power, and related technologies mainly came from locomotive research and development institutions in cities such as Dar es Salaam and Mbeya. This also reflects East Africa’s expertise in related scientific fields. The ability is getting stronger and stronger.

 (End of this chapter)