African Entrepreneurship Record

Of course, compared to the East African Empire’s People’s Assembly Building, the most important structure in the entire Rhein City is clearly the new East African royal palace—the Rhine Palace.

The design for the Rhine Palace is currently underway, unlike the Empire Building, which has already begun construction. As it will be his future residence, Ernst is putting a lot of thought into it, with numerous requirements.

”The design of the Rhine Palace this time focuses not on the palace itself but on the gardens, emphasizing feng shui, creating harmony between humans and nature, and blending Eastern and Western styles.”

This is a direct quote from Ernst. In his view, having one iconic palace is sufficient; victory does not lie in scale or quantity, like the sprawling architectural complex of the Forbidden City or the massive singular palace structure of the Palace of Versailles.

Take the Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City as examples; Versailles covers an area of over 1.1 million square meters, whereas the Forbidden City is actually a collection of buildings covering 1.043 million square meters, with a building area of 218,400 square meters.

From the data, it seems that the Palace of Versailles might be larger than the Forbidden City, but Versailles includes a vast garden area, while the Forbidden City is just the inner city of the current Far East royal domain.

However, Ernst personally does not favor European gardens because their planning is too orderly, emphasizing geometric shapes. Taking the Palace of Versailles gardens as an example, they have a resemblance to modern Far East Empire city parks.

Therefore, Ernst hopes the gardens of the Rhine Palace will adapt to the terrain and topography of Rhein City, blending naturally—a bit more ”chaotic” would be better.

This time, the design for the Rhine Palace was not entirely executed by Western designers like last time with the Sweet Palace; instead, a group of garden designers from the Far East Empire was brought in to implement the design for the Rhine Palace.

The garden design of the Rhine Palace mainly draws from Northern gardens of the Far East Empire. Firstly, the Far East Empire government has concentrated talent with many royal and private gardens in the North, so the professionalism is undeniable.

Furthermore, considering precipitation, Rhein City’s rainfall is generally above 800 millimeters, which is just between the North and South of the Far East Empire.

Thus, creating ”little bridges and flowing water” in Rhein City is unrealistic. Additionally, the overall atmosphere of the palace should lean towards solemnity, grandeur, and splendour, while Southern gardens are relatively delicate, complex, and reserved.

This would appear incongruous with the overall East African characteristic. Of course, Northern garden designs emphasize a rigorous order, tidy layout, symmetry, and extensive use of axial and scenic lines.

For Ernst, this is unacceptable, being too rigid, so the garden design for the Rhine Palace should essentially blend distinct Western and Eastern features.

However, the overall effect is more inclined towards the Northern garden features of the Far East Empire, with the biggest difference being East Africa has no distinct winter, thus vegetation doesn’t significantly change with the seasons.

Additionally, the layout of Southern gardens is unrestricted, aiming to design according to the local natural environment and river terrain flows.

The Renshaw Fowa River, as a tributary of the Luangwa River of the Zambezi River, actually has several tributaries along its banks. The Rhine Palace will utilize these small rivers to achieve its garden layout.

This is the general characteristic of the Rhine Palace’s garden, adhering to Ernst’s requirements. Including the garden area, the final area of the Rhine Palace only reaches around 300,000 square meters, similar to palaces in most countries around the world.

But this only refers to the overall area, including gardens, not the building area. Ernst’s forecast for the building area is limited to only 50,000 square meters, and this is just the upper limit, meaning the final result might be less than 50,000 square meters.

This scale can only be considered moderate among world palaces, but nonetheless, it is more than twice the size of Sweet Palace in First Town City.

Ultimately, the expected Rhine Palace in Ernst’s heart is merely a palace within a garden, even smaller than some university areas.

Nevertheless, this reflects the East African royal family’s ”frugality,” unlike many current European countries that make their palaces splendid, magnificent, and not just one, like the famous Versailles Palace in France, along with the Louvre, Fontainebleau Palace, and Elysee Palace.

Austria also has distinctions between Winter and Summer Palaces, such as Mei Quan Palace as the Summer Palace, and Winter Palace being the Hofburg Imperial Palace.

In the past, East Africa only had one royal palace, Sweet Palace, and it was relatively small. Of course, the climate in East Africa determined that there couldn’t be both Winter and Summer Palaces.

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The overall construction of Rhein City evidently begins with the administrative area, previously mentioned to be generally divided into three parts: the palace district, the national administrative center district, and the city center administrative district.

These include the palace district and the national administrative center district closely connected, while the city center administrative district, or the position close to the city planning center of Rhein City government.

From a transportation accessibility standpoint, the national administrative center district, although not in the center of Rhein City, is by no means inferior to the Rhein City government.

East Africa plans to build three railways to directly connect Rhein City with Kabwe City, New Frankfurt City, and Tete City.

Indeed, the railway along the Zambezi River will ultimately pass through First Town City before reaching New Frankfurt City. After all, Rhein City as the East African capital does not primarily serve as a major traffic hub.

But Rhein City must be a transportation hub city. To put it simply, access through Rhein City’s railways is prioritized for officials, government employees, troops, students, and Rhein citizens.

The intensity of use between the two varies greatly; frankly speaking, New Frankfurt City handles the rough work, while Rhein City does the ”prestigious” work.

Currently, Rhein City is an extensive construction site, with priority construction given to railways, roads, and other basic transportation, even with corresponding plans for subways and civil defense projects.

This aspect is quite advanced, considering that at this time period there are no airplanes, nor are there bombers able to threaten East African airspace.

Moreover, even if there were airplanes, given Rhein City’s location deep in the heart of East Africa, it would be hard to attack. After all, if enemy planes could reach here, it would indicate East Africa is surely struggling.

As for the subway, it is not something novel; the United Kingdom built the world’s first subway back in 1863, thus there are no major technical hurdles.

Currently, East Africa is merely initiating tunnel constructions, which for Rhein City, starting entirely from scratch, is relatively easier.

At this point in time, only the United Kingdom has subways, East Africa could possibly be the second or third country in the world with an underground metro.

This is because other countries planning railways at the same time as East Africa include Austria-Hungary and Hungary (opened in 1896), which planned the first subway to celebrate Hungary’s 1000-year founding, with the United States having similar plans but at a later date (opened in 1897).

Of course, East Africa’s progress might be slightly faster, due to relatively lower construction difficulty. Rhein City is a blank slate now, so the difficulty in building is comparatively low, whereas other countries are building subways in already existing and bustling city locations, requiring consideration of more unfavorable factors.

Even if construction is completed, opening will still take some time, as the current Rhein City is entirely a ”ghost town.”

East Africa’s first subway, like Austria-Hungary’s, uses electricity as the main power source, with relevant technology mainly originating from locomotive research institutions in cities like Dar es Salaam and Mbeya, demonstrating East Africa’s increasing capability in related scientific fields.