Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Beomsu Kim, Sanghun Kim
South Korea

Change of Terra – Terraforming in Permafrost
If the greenhouse gas increases more than 940 ppm (parts per million) by the year 2100, the coastal and inland area that inhibits 750 million people will be submerged from the year 2050, and about 29 percent of the Earth’s surface will be desertified. This means approximately a quarter of people from all over the world will be affected by climate change. Also, since 2018, the rate of climate refugees constitutes about two-thirds (18 million) of worldwide refugees (28 million). Therefore, if a settled environment has been collapsed, people should migrate to a new base. We focus on permafrost, which is frozen northern half, as the people’s new base. If the global temperature increases continuously, Russia’s Siberian and permafrost (22.8*10^6 km2), which is more than double the area of the States (9.8*10^6 km2), will be able to accommodate a lot of climate refugees, and it will also get ideal climate.

However, the thickness of ice is about 80 m and the ground of permafrost, which is consisted of polygonal patterned wetland and ice-wedge, is still inappropriate to develop the infrastructure and natural forest. Moreover, new puddles and waterways, which were produced by global warming, accelerate the stratum instability and may act as a channel that makes carbon dioxide and methane go through to the air, and this will cause more serious global warming and air pollution. Therefore, a strategy is required to be able to establish the settlement at the unsettled land and atmosphere. We suggest the terraforming of permafrost by a design structured with a systematic mechanism.

Root Systemic Structure – Layer Between Human and Nature
It is difficult to hold permafrost’s polygonal patterned ground by a singular structure. Thus, we applied the basic principle, in which a root holds the ground, to structure the design. The structural module, similar to a huge forest, is going to occupy, extend, and connect the polygonal patterned ground up to the basement floor, and it will develop organizations such as living accommodation, forestation, and infrastructure construction. In addition, it will create organismic filtering systems, vertically depending on the structure’s core, and will be able to relieve the environmental problems as well as minimize the plane range of facility. About 1.4 km2 of the area is going to be stabilized by three cores, and if 60% of the area is occupied by living accommodation, it will accommodate more than 20,000 households and 60,000 people.

Water Treatment
We adopted the 1000 m³/d scale of direct couples vertical type water treatment plant on the lower level exterior, and it will be able to reduce approximately half the area (1100 m2) in comparison to the standard (2168 m2), and it also has the advantage in which energy efficiency improves by 30% through collecting water directly and continuously purifying it. Puddle and waterway, causing the stratum instability, will be absorbed, and this will not only stabilize the soil and stratum but also purify the polluted water.

Methane Energy
Basically, permafrost has insufficient natural forests, which leads to limitations in catching the carbon dioxide and methane gas. We devised an energy plant that can catch particular greenhouse gases at the basement floor before they are exposed to the atmosphere. If power production facilities, which has 6.5 MW(70 Nm³­/min) for each module, is operated for 12 hours, it can supply energy to facilities of structure, surrounding infrastructure, and about 20,000 households (based on the speculation that a household spends 200 kWh per month).

Air Purification
We aim to design an air purification facility located on the upper floor. It can catch the greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4) that are not caught on the basement floor and carbon dioxide, which is produced while generating electronic energy. This will prevent carbon from being accumulated in the air and create a stabilized atmospheric environment.

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