Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Talgat Azimbayev, Bokeikhan Kamza, Arman Bayserik, Amir Ibragimov, Bexultan Duisengaliyev
Kazakhstan

The sunny continent located between the northern and southern subtropical climatic zones, Africa is a mysterious world with a unique climate and diverse fauna. Famous for its Sahara, which is a magnificent image of desert covering nearly all of northern Africa with golden sand dunes, drifty mountains, and rocky plateaus that glisten in the sun.

But all that glitters is not always gold. Behind this beautiful picture lies another. While the center of the continent has a humid tropical climate with extremely heavy rainfall, to the north this humid climate completely changes into a desert climate with longer dry periods and droughts. But the greatest danger is the fact that the border of these arid places expands up to 3 km per year and is accompanied by a lack of moisture. The reason for this is a rise of global surface temperature and human activity, which is equally important.

What Awaits?
In the past year, the population of the African continent grew by 32 million. By the year 2050, annual increases will exceed 42 million people per year and the total population will have doubled to 2.6 billion, according to the UN. This comes to 3.5 million more people per month or 80 additional people per minute. Along with an increasing population of people in Africa, the number of livestock is also growing, leading people to deforestation without any recovery opportunities. They are damaging the ecosystem without realizing what consequences await them until they reach the point of no return. If society keeps this way of life, no one shall be saved.

Solution
The goal of our skyscraper is focused on eliminating these growing problems without risking damage to the environment using modern technology. These technologies are hydroponics. They are a modern and highly effective solution for creating vertical farms. But only hydroponics alone cannot solve the entire existing problem without proper source.

The proposed concept of our vertical farm will work on the basis of ordinary raw water from the oceans and seas, under conditions our farm will not be totally isolated from them. This will provide our skyscraper with a huge amount of raw water, which will flow through underground pipes straight to a depth of 3-4 kilometers under our farm, where water will be naturally vaporized from high temperature and rise inside our skyscraper. The rising steam will become a source of clean water that will feed our farm. Thus, steam becomes the main engine of our building.

According to the Gashem Technologies research, our Steamponic tower has a system able to produce a strong enough local thermal ascending motion of the air due to steam released in large amounts, which provides conditions for an artificial rainfall (inspired by The Gashem Rain System).

Conclusion
The problems of Africa will not remain only Africa’s. It is only the first victim of what awaits us all in the future. Seeking utopia for Africa we came up with our «Steamponic» tower. We believe the suggested skyscraper could be one of the true solutions to this problem. Because steam power is the First Industrial Revolution for a reason!

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