How NOT to Turn Volkshalle Into a Rain Factory

Question

This is a model of Volkshalle, the People's Dome, part of a vision of "Germania" by Adolf Hitler. But the tides of war had washed Germania away, yet this and other architectural plans by Albert Speer were influences of many alternate history fictions, most notably The Man in the High Castle.

The one detail that I always get puzzled on is that Volkshalle would be so large that the exhalations of so many people would turn the interior of the building literally into a raincloud. Where did this assumption come from? And if true, could there be some way to counter this meteorological complication without majorly compromising the size of the structure?

Answer 1

There are two buildings that I'm aware of that have significant internal weather problems, Nasa's Vehicle Assembly Building and Boeing’s Everett facility.

Boeing have resolved this by fitting an air circulation system. Nasa resolved the problem with air conditioning and moisture reduction systems.

Since the reducing the size of the building is not an option in either case, it being a practical issue rather than a matter of vanity, the only real implication is the cost of controlling the humidity in a building of that size.

Answer 2

Oculus.

https://www.history.com/news/is-romes-pantheon-a-giant-sundial

Here is the Pantheon, oldest domed building in the world. The Romans addressed your issue by leaving the top open: the Oculus.

It is pretty sweet, the Oculus. They can use the light to produce some cool effects. Underneath it is just a marble floor so I guess they have to mop up when it rains. Another approach would be to have a reflecting pool directly under the oculus to capture most precipitation.

Answer 3

Like other answers, the issue is what sort of air handling system could be installed to exchange the air, ventilate and reduce the moisture content and for that matter, keep the hall at some sort of constant temperature?

With the sort of technologies available in the 1940's this would be quite an intricate problem. A massive air handling unit could possibly be installed at the top of the dome, filling the "Lantern" structure. This would require careful engineering of the dome itself to deal with the weight and vibrations of the machinery, as well as the power and fluid systems running up to the air handling equipment. There is also the issue of acoustics, it is quite possible the rumbling of the air handling units would resonate and the shape of the dome would act like a speaker and transmit the sound to the crowds below.

The lantern would need hundreds of these units inside

Another alternative might be to install a multitude of fans in the base of the dome. Pulling air out of the structure at that level would create air circulation both at the ground level and the dome level, causing warm moisture laden air to exhaust from the building before it can condense. The effect on the structure with so many "holes" piercing the base of the dome, and the possible sound effects of so many fans running are potential negatives to the scheme. At the scale we're considering, the fans would be similar in size to airplane propellers.

Professor Junkers, now that these airplanes are obsolete, we have another use for the propellers...

A few hundred of these fans would do the trick

A final consideration is due to the sheer size of the structure, the air handling units must be running all the time. The janitor cannot just flip the switch an hour before the meeting starts, it could take days to ensure the temperature and humidity was stabilized, and of course before a giant rally the hall would really need to be cooled considerably in order to provide a comfortable environment for the crowd (which would be generating massive amounts of heat) and the Party functionaries at the upper levels.

The * Volkshalle* would be a sinkhole of constant maintenance and energy consumption just to ensure the main structure would be habitable. In many ways, it might actually have been easier to roof over the parts of the Nuremberg Stadium than build the Volkshalle

Zeppelinfield, Nuremberg grounds

Kongresshalle facade

Kongresshalle inner courtyard

Answer 4

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkshalle

Considering the last paragraph it isn’t unthinkable that condensation of some sort might take place. The warm air raises and cools on the way up. Due to the nature of air the water content in the gaseous phase will drop and condensate. So basically you have to options

1. dry the air by removing water from it
2. Heat the dome and dome walls so that condensation doesn’t happen.

Answer 5

Maybe you might actually want rain inside the Volkshalle. Should interior rain be considered a bug or a feature?

PART ONE: Interior Rain in the People's Hall?

Other large interior spaces have interior weather and interior rain.

The Vehicle Assembly Building has internal weather:

Within the VAB, that warm moist air rises, and rises, and rises. As it does, the moisture condenses. By the time it gets to the top of the building condensation forms on surfaces and a mist is sometimes visible. That condensation then falls down, like rain.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-scientific-explanation-of-the-Nasa-Vehicle-Assembly-Building-having-its-own-rainclouds-weather1

The building has at least 40 MW of air conditioning equipment, including 125 ventilators2 on the roof supported by four large air handlers (four cylindrical structures west of the building) to keep moisture under control. Air in the building can be completely replaced every hour. The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including "rain clouds form[ing] below the ceiling on very humid days",[11] which the moisture reduction systems are designed to minimize.

At 3,664,883 cubic meters (129,428,000 cubic feet) it is one of the largest buildings in the world by volume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building2

The VAB is merely the seventh largest building by volume in Wikipedia's list of largest buildings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings3

The largest is:

The Boeing Everett Factory, in Everett, Washington, is an airplane assembly building owned by Boeing. Located on the north-east corner of Paine Field, it is the largest building in the world by volume at 13,385,378 m3 (472,370,319 cu ft) and covers 399,480 m2 (98.7 acres; 39.948 hectares; 0.399 square kilometres).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Everett_Factory4

The Boeing factory is so big it that is rains in the factory? True. This factory is so massive that when the factory was first built, clouds, the product of accumulated warm air and moisture, actually formed near the ceiling. However, the “weather” cleared when a state-of-the-art air circulation system was installed.

https://blogs.mentor.com/jvandomelen/blog/2010/04/15/the-biggest-building-in-the-world-10-boeing-everett-factory-myths-true-or-false/5

Rumor #2 It rains in the factory The factory is such a massive facility, that could fit 75 American football fields inside. Due to its size, there is a common notion, that it rains in the facility. There is some truth to the myth. In the late 1960s, aircraft manufacturing processes produced warm air and small clouds formed near the ceiling. As one can imagine, water and mechanics are not birds of a feather, therefore, the Boeing Company installed a state-of-the-art air circulation system to avoid the formation of the clouds.

https://www.aerotime.aero/aerotime.team/12860-the-stories-about-everett-factory-myths-vs-truth6

The 17th and smallest building in the list of the largest buildings by volume is Hanger One, Mountain View, California. It is listed as having an interior volume of one million cubic meters or thirty five million cubic feet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings3

The hangar's interior is so large that fog sometimes forms near the ceiling.2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_One_(Mountain_View,_California)7

So it seems that structures as "small" as 1,000,000 cubic meters or 35,000,000 cubic feet can have interior weather with mists, fog, clouds, and rain happening inside.

I don't know the interior volume of the Volkshalle would have been. Wikipedia says:

...The dome of the Volkshalle was to rise from a massive granite podium 315 by 315 metres (1,033 ft × 1,033 ft) and 74 metres (243 ft) high, to a total inclusive height of 290 metres (950 ft). The diameter of the dome, 250 metres (820 ft),...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkshalle8

Assuming that the room under the dome would have an interior diameter of 250 meters (820 feet) and a total height of 290 meters (950 feet), it could be calculated as a cylinder with those dimensions. Thus it should have a total volume of about 14,200,000 cubic meters, or about 500,000,000 cubic feet. If those figures are divided by about two to allow for the shape of the dome, the interior of the main room would be about 7,000,000 cubic meters or about 250,000,000 cubic feet.

So that would make the main room about 7 times the size of Hanger One, almost twice the size of the Vehicle Assembly Building, and a little more than half the size of the Boeing Everett Factory.

Thus it seems reasonable to assume that the main room in the Volkshalle would probably have interior weather, mists, fogs, clouds, and rains, and that some sort of climate control machinery would be needed to prevent or control such indoor weather.

So how should the architects and planners result to the realisation that the Volkshalle would have interior weather?

PART TWO: Throne rooms of Galactic Emperors

I remember in a science fiction novel, Mission to the Heart Stars (1965) by James Blish, the heroes travel to the center of the galaxy, to the capital of the Hegemony of Mallis. When they meet the Hegemon, sort of a galactic emperor, the throne room is described as a very vast and awe inspiring hall.

And then Blish sort of spoiled the effect of the throne room by having one of the characters sort of exaggerate and imagine that the throne room could be vast enough to have its own indoor weather and rain. I couldn't believe that a brilliant writer like Blish could be so stupid. I knew that the Vehicle Assembly Building is large enough to have internal weather and rain. So by having a character merely get carried away by their imagination and exaggeratedly wonder if the room was big enough to have internal weather, Blish was suggesting that a galactic emperor might possibly have had such a modest and humble throne hall that it was actually even tinier than the Vehicle Assembly Building!

Well, I for one, think foul scorn that any science fiction writer could ever imagine any self respecting galactic emperor would ever have such a tiny throne room that it was too small to have its own weather system.

I would imagine that even the small, private, audience chamber of a galactic emperor, a tiny fraction of the size of their medium audience hall, which in turn would be a tiny fraction of the size of their large audience hall, would be many times large enough to have its internal weather.

But how would a galactic emperor's architects handle the problem of it raining inside the throne room?

PART THREE: An Example from Earth's history

And I ask what problem?

Khosrow or Chosroes II, King of Kings of Iran and of Non Iran (reigned 590 to 628), built a fabulous and legendary building - a temple, palace, or public building, or maybe some combination - that was destroyed by the Roman army near the end of the terrible Roman-Persian war of 602-628.

As I remember, there was a hall with a column, and a statue of a god or of Khosrow on the top of the column, and there was a dome above the room, and the inside of the dome was decorated to resemble the heavens. And the dome could be made to revolve around the statue, like the heavens appear to revolve around the Earth, perhaps inspired by stories of the rotating room in Nero's Golden House. And as the heavenly dome revolved, it made a noise like thunder, and sprinklers could be used to make it appear to rain inside the hall.

So this hall suggested that the god, or Khosrow, was the master of the universe and could control the weather.

And I can imagine a galactic emperor might have gigantic throne halls of similar design but scaled up many times the size of that room, and use climate control systems to prevent rain when it wasn't wanted and cause rain when it was wanted, and systems to make artificial thunder and lightening.

A galactic emperor would know that their subjects were too scientifically educated to be fooled into thinking they were divine by such effects, but the subjects would probably appreciate the entertainment provided by such effects. And the galactic emperor would probably know that many previous rulers on various planets used such designs even when their technology was much more primitive than the galactic emperor's, so if they do not use a super sized version of such throne rooms they will be failing to keep up with rulers who had less than one subject for each planet that the galactic emperor rules.

I would certainly feel humiliated if I described a place and/or throne hall for a galactic emperor and then discovered that it was in any way inferior in size, aesthetics, or technology, to a palace and/or throne a hall of any imperator, or basileus, or shahanshah, or padishah, or huangdi, or other ruler, in Earth's history.

PART FOUR: What Would Hitler's Architects Do About the Rain?

And again I ask: "Why stop the rain?"

If the Volkshalle was so large that it might sometimes naturally rain in there, it would be logical to install systems to control the internal climate and weather, to keep it from raining when it was not wanted. But it also seems logical to me to sometimes use those climate control systems to make it rain when rain was wanted. And thus perhaps make artificial rain, thunder, and lightening to put emphasis on the right moments of Hitler's speeches.

But such an artificial weather system might seem too good for Nazis and Hitler. A writer might not want to depict them enjoying such features in their great hall.

But on the other hand, a story where Hitler is accidentally electrocuted by the artificial lightening would be kind of funny.

But on a third hand, you might write a scene where someone has designed such a system for the hall but in a meeting Hitler rejects the idea of installing it, thus revealing how unimaginative he was.

But on a fourth hand, considering all the horror and suffering, death and destruction, from Nazi victories that would be required for the Volkshalle to be built, you might want at least a little bit of something good to come from all that evil, and thus want the Volkshalle to be as wonderful as possible.

And on a fifth hand, maybe the system would be used only when giving tours of the Volkshalle to hordes of school kids with raincoats and umbrellas. They could turn off the rain discouraging system and turn on the rain encouraging system and the kids could watch clouds form and rain start. And they could turn on the artificial thunder and lightening to make it more impressive for the kids.

On a sixth hand, maybe the Nazis only install the rain discouraging and the rain encouraging parts of the system, without the artificial thunder and lightening.

The Nazis could keep it from raining when they don't want it to, but when a meeting is ending or when the building is closing for the night, they could turn on the rain encouraging system so the rain would encourage people to leave.

And if there was a fire in the Volkshalle they could use the rain encouraging system like a sprinkler system to fight the fire.

And maybe when they wash down the interior of the Volkshalle they would bring in firetrucks with super powerful hoses to spray the floor and walls with detergent and then turn on the rain encouraging system to make it rain inside and rinse away the detergent down grates in the floor (The Pantheon in Rome has grates in the floor for rainwater).