Evangelion Rebuild 1.0 - On Platform Architecture

In 2007, Hideaki Anno resurrected the Evangelion series with the first "Rebuild" movie. This was the first in a set of movies which is still in production as of 2013. The storyline begins in an identical fashion to the 1997 Neon Genesis series, but quickly moves into an alternate storyline.

In the year 2015, Shinji Ikari is your average schoolchild whose father runs a private military conglomerate known as NERV. When otherworldly monsters known as Angels storm the city of Tokyo-3, Shinji is tasked with operating the powerful Eva-01, and fighting the menaces as they come. In the first movie, he is assisted by fellow pilot Rei Ayanami, a mysterious and shy girl; and Misato Katsuragi, his temporary guardian and a colonel in the NERV military organization.

Some of you, at this time, might be wondering why it is called Tokyo-3. The first Tokyo was destroyed in the nuclear fallout that followed the Second Impact (one of the first sightings of the Angels, which claimed the lives of billions of humans in one fell swoop). Tokyo-2 is the series capital of Japan, though it was supposed to be a temporary location. Tokyo-3 was meant to be the final capital, but never received that designation formally.

Tokyo-3 is a technological marvel, relying heavily on a platform-based architecture that is easily swappable. During the day, the civilian buildings are locked underground, while weaponized 'dummy buildings' are locked into place above ground. At night, this layout inverts so the weaponized buildings are belowground, and the civilian buildings reach up into the starlit sky.

During Shinji's first battle with the Angel Ramiel, a platform emergency salvation system is activated. While Shinji is being bombarded by a particle beam cannon, Colonel Katsuragi orders that the explosive bolts which house the platform his Eva stands on be detonated. This causes the platform to vertically freefall, carrying Shinji with it and ultimately saving his life.

While it will be impossible for us to achieve such phenomenal architecture in the next two years, we are surprisingly already making progress. In 2010, the Ark Hotel in Changsha, China, was completed in six days. The process involved stacking pre-fabricated segments like you would LEGO bricks, and then securing them with heavy duty bolts. The finished product is capable of withstanding a 9.0 earthquake.

So yes, we could construct massive geometric tessellations on the landscape which are swappable in theory. However, the dilemma would come from the locking bolts built into the foundations of Tokyo-3 buildings in Evangelion. What kind of engineering would need to be used to allow these buildings to be unscrewed from their foundations, dropped several dozen meters, and replaced with identically proportioned blocks?