Why a Type 1 Civilization Wouldn’t Build Skyscrapers
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Recently, I came across the Kardashev scale — a method developed by astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, in order to measure a civilization’s level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy it is able to harness and use. Kardashev classified civilizations into three types:
- A Type I civilization captures all available planetary energy and stores it for consumption.
- A Type II civilization can directly harness and utilize a star’s energy.
- A Type III civilization is able to collect and use all the energy emitted by its galaxy.
Guess where our civilization currently stands: still below Type I – what is often described as Type 0. In other words, a civilization that has yet to fully harness and manage the energy available on its own planet is still reliant on finite and unevenly distributed resources. Considering, therefore, the fact that our civilization is still operating below Type I, what does this mean for the way we build?
Take the skyscraper, for instance, a building typology that has long been viewed as the ultimate symbol for technological advancement and urban progress. Yet, approaching it through the lens of energy scarcity, the skyscraper becomes less about an indication of abundance and transitions into a workaround for scarcity. The skyscraper provided the solution for land shortage, enabling centralized infrastructure systems (far more efficient than dispersed alternatives) while compressing the conditions of urban life into a vertical form. “Building tall” essentially became an architectural negotiation for coping with limited resources, resulting in highly centralized, dense cities, compressed functional clusters and a growing reliance on energy-demanding systems in order to sustain life above ground.
Luminous Moon-Gate: Taichung City Cultural Center by Form4 Architecture, Taichung, Taiwan
Within a Type 0 civilization, the skyscraper emerged as the architecture that navigates existing energy constraints. But in the case where planetary energy has been mastered, what forms of architecture would take its place? If energy is abundant, centralized systems become obsolete. If land scarcity is no longer a constraint, verticality loses its logic. If resources are evenly distributed, the dense urban core itself begins to unravel. In that context, the skyscraper looks more like a byproduct of an earlier societal and urban development rather than an inevitable structure that reflects true technological maturity.
If we were to speculate, what would a Type I architectural paradigm look like? Instead of vertically stacking programs, a quieter, more low-rise development would take center stage. Without the pressures of maximizing the value of every available square meter, programs could be spread out, blurring the boundaries between urban and rural areas and instead creating thresholds of mixed — albeit continuous – activity.
Shebara Resort by Killa Design, Saudi Arabia
This shift would support the emergence of distributed cities, potentially shattering the concept of the “city-center,” and establishing networks of smaller, interlinked urban nodes. By mastering renewable energy sources, these urban networks could become self-sufficient, where energy, water and even food production are all embedded within the built environment.
Through this model, communities cease to be dependent on distant centralized energy infrastructure and allow a wider flexibility in how cities could be spatially organized. This reconfiguration opens the door to what every utopian architect ever envisioned: landscape integration. In other words, developments that extend alongside natural systems and adopt ecological processes to function efficiently.
Ironically, architecture in a Type I civilization begins to read less as an exercise in compression and more as a project of expansion. The long-held critique of the “unchecked sprawl” is gradually unpacked, leading to an urban/architectural strategy, where spreading out means achieving balance with sustainable energy production and a healthier exchange with the landscape that sustains it.
Presence in Hormuz 2 (Majara Residence) by ZAV Architects | Iran, Jury Winner, Concepts – Architecture + Color, 9th Architizer A+Awards
This, in fact, stands in contrast to speculative visions like Liam Young’s Planet City, where the entirety of humanity is compressed into a hyper-dense urban enclave, leaving the rest of the planet untouched. Here, the opposite argument emerges, where a Type I civilization is capable of inhabiting the Earth more lightly and evenly, becoming an active participant in the broader ecological and infrastructural planetary network.
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Featured Image: ReGen Villages by EFFEKT, Almere, Netherlands
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