New York-based architect Ju-Hyun Kim envisions the theme parks of the future as vertical structures in large metropolises. His concept for a theme park skyscraper borrows the idea from Disneyland to create different worlds but bases the entire experience in height and the relationship with the existing city. Ju-Hyun proposes a park without automobiles, a sustainable building that harvest solar and green energy, recycles waste, and collects rainwater.

The classic rides, such as the Ferris Wheel, rollercoaster, and carousel are all re-imagined for a vertical experience. Ju-Hyun’s vertical theme park has five major areas: Vertigo World (carousel and observation deck), Fast Land (flume ride, rollercoaster), 360 World (Ferris Wheel, sky promenade), Abyss City (deep city diver), and the Elsewhere Universe (space exploration, science center).

We hope this concept becomes a reality to transform and inject new life to a century-old invention. Read the rest of this entry »

The harsh sun, waterless dunes and spectacular, stark forms created by mountains of sand swirling in the wind are seen as inspirations of incredible beauty by architects Francisco J. del Corral del Campos and Carmen M. Barrós Velásquez, both of Granada, Spain. The two celebrate this landscape and respond to its demands in their new skyscraper design for a greenhouse tower in the Oman desert.

The architects literally cast their idea for the “Oasis” tower into the wind to help define its shape. By examining the effect of the site’s southeast wind on a tower, they designed the building to respond to the wind’s movement, its sweeping flow, by softly curving its form as it arches into the sky.

Solar energy and biogas generation from organic waste material will power the tower’s energy needs, and water from the ocean will be transported and desalinated to provide the drinking water and irrigation supply. Additionally, gray water is reused to cool the building and the surrounding environment through a spray process that creates a cooling vapor around the building. Read the rest of this entry »

The Casalgrande Ceramic Cloud, the first work of architecture in Italy by Kengo Kuma, the Japanese master, and a new symbolic gate of the ceramics district of Emilia Romagna, is located in the municipality of Casalgrande, in the province of Reggio Emilia. The work is located near the production works of Casalgrande Padana, the leading company in the production of unglazed stoneware and the buyer of the work itself.

The CCCloud transversally divides the space of a roundabout like a thin diaphragm curtain dynamically attracting the viewers’ sight. The layout plan of the work is oblong and streamlined at the ends and the central section reaches a maximum width of 1.7 metres. It is almost 12 metre tall.

For the first time, ceramic material is tested for structural purposes. Its 3D structure is composed of nine layers of large technical porcelain stoneware slabs – standard production items by Casalgrande Padana – placed one onto the others and interconnected by means of thin hidden threaded bars. Read the rest of this entry »

Time Magazine has reported that the most expensive home in the world has been completed. The owner, Mukesh Ambani is the fourth richest man in the world according to Forbes. Mr. Ambani is Chairman of Reliance Industries which controls a large portion of oil and gas products in Asia. His new residence, Antilia, named after the mythical island in the Atlantic is a twenty-seven floor building with approximately 400,000 square feet. The tower has been designed by Chicago-based architects Perkins & Will and constructed by Leighton Holdings. Read the rest of this entry »

When looking at high rise buildings as housing, two extremes often come to mind: luxury skyscrapers that provide penthouses to the rich and powerful, and overcrowded “projects” that offer often substandard living conditions to lower-income families.

Ilana Prac, an interior design student at Tel Aviv, Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, has designed a skyscraper that seeks to soften those two extremes. In Prac’s “Merging Lifestyles” 2010 eVolo skyscrapers competition entry, people of varying economic and social backgrounds come together to live in one building, which is a solid structure composed of many multi-sized and colored pods. While merging its population internally, the building also seeks to meld elements on its exterior, seaming into the Neve Tsedek neighborhood of Tel Aviv through use of the area’s vernacular materials and typology. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sustainable Ocean Living (SOL) tower and complex, designed by Australian architects David John McMorrow and Mario Celik, brings a new possible solution to housing the earth’s rapidly growing population – ship them out to sea.

Three billion new people will be born on this planet by 2050, experts say, posing unprecedented burdens on the earth’s resources. McMorrow and Celik see this as an opportunity to utilize modern technology to create a city that is, exotically enough, located in the middle of the ocean. The pair has designed, in SOL, a city system that is completely self-sufficient. Wave power harnessed through buoys provides the city’s energy, vertical agriculture and ocean fish farms provide food, and a marina with luxury hotels, restaurants and other amenities will make the city an exciting and enjoyable place to live and visit. Read the rest of this entry »

OMA recently unveiled their masterplan for Qianhai Port City. Situated at the threshold of Hong Kong and Mainland China, Qianhai occupies a position of strategic significance in the Pearl River Delta. The planned intensification of transport through the site renders inevitable its emergence as a new center. The question is not whether Qianhai will develop, but how? If successful, a new city center in Qianhai could fulfill Shenzhen’s coastal ambitions and establish a node for interaction between various components of the PRD.

The existing use of the site consists primarily of infrastructure, transportation, and logistics. The operations of the port and its related functions define the quality of much of the site and adjacent areas. What if, rather than attempting to suppress or insulate these uses from new development, they are considered as latencies capable of forming the identity of a new city? Can the introduction of new urban conditions benefit from and reinforce the existing (port) conditions of the site? The design organizes the site in a series of parallel bands running east-west. The irregular extension of these layers into the Qianhai Bay and Pearl River Estuary creates piers and increases the proximity of the city to the water. The layers form a stack of different and juxtaposed types of space, each varying in terms of architectural typology, density, and landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

A unique superblock is officially opened today in the French City of Lyon. Designed by Erick van Egeraat created the superblock, called the ‘Monolith’in collaboration with the French architects Combarel-Marrec, Manuelle Gautrand, Pierre Gautier and the Dutch Architect Winy Maas.

This superblock is part of the urban renewal project Lyon Confluence. The building with its exuberant architecture is intended to add the new values to this derelict territory which was previously a thriving industrial district. Now the area is transformed into an innovative and beautiful part of Lyon’s city center. Erick van Egeraat and his French and Dutch colleagues all contributed to this ambitious development.

The Lyon Confluence project consists of three lots: A, B and C. The project of (designed by Erick van Egeraat) is located in lot C which is also know as Le Monolithe. Lot C comprises of office, retail and residential units on a size of 32.000m2, is located in Lyon’s key – redevelopment area Lyon Confluence. It will accommodate 1.500 new residents, 15.000m2 of new office-space and 1.800 m2 of retail. This ‘superblock‘ is part of the larger inner-city redevelopment in the gastronomic center of France. Read the rest of this entry »

In a metaphorical seaming of the social and economic divides that keep downtown and suburban Raleigh, North Carolina separate, Carlos Paredes and Sofia Chiriboga, M. Arch students at the Savannah College of Art and Design, have designed a building that seeks to unite the city’s population through housing, retail, services, and an appealing landscape.

The city’s once structured grid, deformed over time, has served as the design inspiration for the building’s multi-use towers, which curve and intertwine within a skeleton of intersecting rectangular frames. The building’s two towers are also symbolic: the lower tower houses a financial services complex and represents Raleigh’s urban population, and the taller tower, which nestles into the lower at points, represents the wants of the city’s suburban population by providing high-end housing units. Elevators that move both horizontally and vertically are utilized to link floors within the 15 and 30-story towers, and ample greenery is interspersed to provide shading and organic gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

Architect Tamir Lavi of Tel Aviv, Israel is using bamboo as the material in his new apartment skyscraper, but not in the way you might think. Bamboo isn’t Lavi’s construction material – it’s his research material.

The stalk of a bamboo plant – its sturdy inner skeleton, the way light shines through to the inside, the layout of its hollw cells – has served as a blueprint for the conception of Lavi’s building, which is proposed for the northern “diamond exchange” border area of Tel Aviv. Using bamboo’s strength against wind and other environmental stressors as evidence of its design superiority, Lavi’s skyscraper version replicates the cell layout to arrange the individual apartments, and uses the sun’s infiltration in thinking about how to control natural light throughout the building. Read the rest of this entry »