1st Place
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Kyu Ho Chun, Kenta Fukunishi, JaeYoung Lee
United States

First Place

This project examines a possible solution to the multiple environmental problems we might have in the year 2050. If we continue with the same year to year increment in air pollutants it will no longer be safe to breathe in the outdoors without a filtering device. Neo Arc is the solution proposed by a group of architects, engineers, scientists, and developers that are studying how to integrate the latest green technologies in major residential and commercial developments.

Neo Arc is equipped with solar panels and filtering systems for air and water. Its high-per formative green façade is covered with vegetation that filters rain water and releases oxygen into the atmosphere.

Neo Arc is a continuous surface that is shaped as an artificial landscape that provides shelter to plants and people. Its enormous water reservoir produces oxygen and sufficient energy for the entire structure, including its own transportation system. Its façade is designed as a set of triangles that respond to the program and environment. Its program includes residential and commercial spaces, transportation system, water reservoir, sky pool, sports arena, and public parks.

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2nd Place
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Nicola Marchi, Adelaide Marchi
France

Second Place

Michel Etienne Turgot, Borough President of the City of Paris in 1734, commissioned to the drafter Louis Bretez the most beautiful and accurate representation of Paris in the ‘Ancien Régime’.

Based on this representation, it is evident that most bridges in the City at that time are living quarters and perform as actual buildings, fully integrated into the bridge itself. The same typology is found in the historic ‘Ponte Vecchio’ in Florence, that survives unaltered to this date, with its direct relationship between ‘bridge architecture’ and the river.

The center of Paris is deeply characterized by the extraordinary presence of the Seine River, touching the historic monuments such as the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the Grande Palais. These are all landmarks that provide orientation in the city, as authentic milestones.

We think that the historic city can still develop and grow its density vertically, respecting and highlighting the existing context. The grand open spaces of Paris, and particularly the Place de la Concorde, have the potential of integrating the new 400-meter high building, made of two narrow (12 meter) and long (216 meter) volumes. The building is integrated with the Seine, becoming a new landmark and offering the historic center the development of the most varied programmatic elements, including recreational, cultural, residential, and performing spaces.

The new bridge for the city is a living one.

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3rd Place
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Eric Vergne
United States

Third Place

In the Hudson Yard area of Manhattan, this urban high rise farm introduces inherently political opposing elements; farmers (producers) and New Yorkers (consumers) through farms, workers housing, and market places. Through the mixing of politically opposing classes, social and cultural confrontations are generated within a high rise typology by introducing producers of biomass into the city, a place of historic biomass consumption. In so doing, the high rise is re-defined not by efficiency, but rather through the use of surfaces to orchestrate the dynamic programmatic interactions and the multiplicity of spatial organization they suppose. The essence of these social/political programmatic relationships is unclear. The spaces they create are lived not represented or conceived. One can only speculate on the range of lived relationships and oppositions that might form within and around this urban farm.

Through food production and consumption, this skyscraper sets up a fluctuation of varying densities and collections of people, bringing together different social and cultural groups, creating new and unforeseen urban experiences that form and dissipate within the flux of city life. By defining programs, this tower does not seek to control and manipulate interaction between politically dynamic groups of farmers and consumers, but rather give a place for the acting out of a multiplicity of outcomes. Program is merely a given caricature not a dictated function. The interior surfaces do not prescribe function but merely hint at their potential. It is up to the everyday users to define the outcome of the space they inhabit given the environment they inherit.

In this urban high rise farm, the romanticizing of modern food production or utopian garden city additions is rejected. Rather, if farming is truly able to provide adequately for a city, a dystopian stage of agricultural production which uses mans control over the growth process, must be accepted. This project accepts genetic engineering, airponic watering and nutrient technologies (a method of spraying plant roots with needed solutions), and controlled lighting and CO2 levels (to maximize plant growth and food production). The tower takes into consideration the different stages of plant production; cloning, vegetative stage and flowering stage to maximize food production as much as possible. In addition it is assumed that genetically engineered plants will be bred to maximize both the nutritional value and production of the crops within the tower. Genetic engineering is controversial but necessary if the tower is to accommodate Manhattan’s food production needs. It is projected that multiple towers will be needed to meet the city´s food production needs. Accordingly a new type of city dweller is created, the nomadic worker, who moves throughout the city tending to its food production needs and resisting and reversing the suburbanization of Manhattan.

Looking at density (building height), value of land, and underdevelopment in relation to deviation from the perfect market and relation to maximum zoning allowance, as well as existing urban markets throughout Manhattan, several optimum sites for urban farms were chosen. Given the planed high profile nature and the dramatic increase in density of the Hudson Yard area development, it was chosen as the flagship of Manhattan urban farms.
This projects investigation draws on the material logic of plant mechanics. The cells of ferns have evolved bio-mechanical configurations which maximize strength while minimizing material. Using these attributes, analogue models were created, investigating a new structural system for high rise construction that allows for dynamic interior spaces.

Applying non-linear programmatic rules to the functions of an urban farm, this project investigates how self-organizing computation can be used to organize programmatic elements. Each programmatic element was given a set of simple rules which encompassed its conceptual and contextual needs, resulting in a complex fluctuating system. This system already had inherent political opposition; farmers and farms (producers) and New Yorkers and markets (consumers). Accordingly, how the program organized itself within the computer always had inherent cultural and social dynamics. The organization of the program, within a skyscraper, brought these politically charged programs into varying degrees of confrontation and organization.

Breaking down the structural mechanics of the spinal cord in to basic compression and tension members, an adaptive structure was created to support the elevator core, which borrows its variability from roller coaster design.

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Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Sylvie Milosevic
France

Special Mention

The skyscraper has paradoxically enjoyed a renaissance since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which brought world attention to the tragedy while raising multiple questions about its future. The boom in the Middle East has focused purely on new aesthetics and a lavish display of economic wealth. In contrast, Vertical Ecology Redux is a project that brings a new level of per formative organization into the design equation; it is fully integrated into the urban fabric and existing infrastructure.

Vertical Ecology Redux is located on the waterfront of Hong Kong. The ground level is a continuous path that fuses the tower to the port and offers a series of cultural amenities. The tower emerges as three distinct geometries that merge into a structure with housing and commercial space. The façade is a hybrid structural system of pleats, seams, subdivisions, lacing, and cells.

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Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Stefan Shaw, John Dent
United Kingdom

Special Mention

A closed loop metabolic system
A completely closed metabolic cycle in which traffic exhaust emissions are harnessed via CO2 collectors in order to feed algae grown in photo bio-reactors within the building’s facade. Algae and natural by-products produced during algae cultivation are then refined to produce renewable energy sources.

Towering 1.2 km above Spaghetti Junction, Birmingham, the UK’s largest and most congested motorway intersection, the scheme portrays a radical concept in high rise, high density urban living. Benefitting from positive solar orientation, in order to maximize solar acceptance toward the dynamic photo bioreactors which are built into the facade, BIOCITY acts as a an environmental filter, harnessing harmful traffic exhaust emissions in order to feed and cultivate microscopic algae to produce renewable bio-fuels. These bio-fuels are used to produce renewable electricity to power the vertical city and to cultivate vehicular bio-diesel and liquid hydrogen for use in hydrogen fuel cells.

Algae as bio-fuel
Over 50 percent of Algae’s bio mass is oil. This oil can in turn be refined in order to produce renewable and thus sustainable bio-fuels. Left wild, algae can cause massive destruction to aqua based eco systems by starving the water of natural light; however, by harnessing the raw potential of this amazing plant, energy concerns around the globe could easily be neutralized with the use of innovative photo-bioreactor technologies.

Algae are the fastest growing organic material on the planet – ten times faster than trees – with the more efficient species doubling their volume every 6 hours. Microscopic Algae’s yield per hectare is considerably higher than that of sunflower or rapeseed. Using algae as a biomass for generating oil, 75000 liters of bio-diesel per acre per year can be generated, compared to just 68 liters using corn as a biomass. Microscopic microalgae are typically free floating in the water and encompass several groups of relatively simple organisms that capture light energy through photosynthesis, using it to convert inorganic substances into organic matter. Bio-diesel produced using algae contains no sulfur, is non-toxic and highly biodegradable.

Façade as algae bio-reactor
Since algae need sunlight, carbon-dioxide and water for their growth, they can be cultivated in open ponds. However, the unassisted growth in open ponds is slow, alternatively, for use in the vertical city, algae is grown in closed photo-bioreactors, where the environment is better controlled.

Bio-cities
Three towers constituting a massive 1,850,000 square meters of facade area, allow for algae bio-cultivation to take place within plastic tube photo bio-reactors integrated within the double skin facade. With the cultivation of 150,000 gallons of refined algae oil per hectare, this adds up to an impressive 1,300,000 barrels of renewable bio diesel produced by Bio-City each year.

Non-vertical transport system
Due to the intrinsic dilemma of vertical circulation within high-rise structures, Bio-City benefits from an innovative vertical-horizontal pedestrian transport system.
The non vertical transport system operates with the use of gyroscopic transport modules running along pneumatic tracks within the vertical skyways running between bio-cities. The Non-vertical transport system operates as any subway network found worldwide. Users are able to commute between vertical-horizontal locations within Bio-City with the speed and comfort of a luxury public transport network designed specifically for use with the vertical cities of tomorrow.

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Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Brian Ahmes, Gregg Hicks, Chad Porter
United States

Special Mention

During the 1960’s the city of Dallas possessed a vibrant urban culture, stimulated by round-the-clock living, working, and playing. A few years later, an aggressive interstate construction and a new desire for the suburban dream, transformed the city into a commuter business hub that closes at five o’clock.

The Land Scraper is a horizontal skyscraper, rescaling human experience, trying to reconnect the once thriving urban life. Spanning over 1500 feet and five city blocks, the building slithers through three main districts: The Performing Arts District, the Financial District, and Deep Ellum. The project seeks a balance within its neighborhood, encouraging a pedestrian and public experience throughout the day and night. It eliminates the single-core vertical circulation and responds to the dense urban sprawl.

The Land Scraper was designed with the notion of rethinking circulation and connectivity within a dense urban fabric. Its horizontality creates a greater sense of scale and fluidity.

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Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Junkai Jian, Jinqi Huang
China

Special Mention

The cities of the twenty-first century embody extreme qualities of communication and complexity of interaction. In response to the new urban demands the Algorithmic tower employs a code-based scripting methodology that configures higher orders of complexity required by a new kind of aggregation logic. It is coded with specific rules for growth and subdivision that articulate spatial organizations with a mathematical approach.

The Algorithmic tower is formed by cells that are divided into three distinct continuous non-intersecting volumes that allow interplay between indoor and outdoor spaces. These interacting spaces maintain their character, while adapting to growth, and gradually transform into a series of vertical aggregates. The skin wraps and changes its shape, porosity and character in response to the indoor spaces which vary in dimensions, according to the proposed parametric growth. The cells grow vertically and spirally, creating curved modules that are locally controlled with a set of rules for program, density, orientation, and expected growth.

The Algorithmic tower contains three interconnected towers in play with each other. The first is the vertical circulation volume with the stairs and the elevators. The second one is formed by the private spaces while the third includes the common and recreational areas.

The Algorithmic tower relies in various mathematical equations for gradual transitions and space subdivisions. Its system could be applied at an urban level to create a city that reacts and adjusts to different programs and events.

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Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Luis Longhi, Christian Bottger, Carla Tamariz
Peru

Special Mention

Nature of Nature is a proposed skyscraper near Machu Picchu, Peru that will be used for different cultural activities and as temporal residence for visitors to the archeological site.

The skyscrapers will be attached to the mountains by a series of anchors or ‘morphological extensions’ that collect and distribute energy from the jungle. It is designed as a structural mesh for programmatic cells of different sizes for public and private spaces. Its façade is conceived as a flexible membrane that allows different micro-climates and collects water from the constant fog and energy from the sun. The grouping of various cell clusters will create residual spaces for cultural and recreational activities.

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Special Metion
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Wei Wei, Luping Yuan
United States

Special Mention

Skyscape is a possible solution to the most polluted cities around the world. It is a system of thousands of air cleaning cells that float above the urban areas as an orchestrated particle filter. Every ten days the cells regroup for maintenance in a landing base outside the cities creating beautiful skyscrapers.

Its surface is made of high efficient filters that collect pollutants and constantly produce fresh-clean air. The cells are radio controlled with different patterns of organization depending on the environment.

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Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Francis Wilmore, Courtney Brinegar, Jennifer Cramer
United States

In the reality of a global consumerist society, William McDonough states that we need to, “honor commerce as the engine of change.”  As noticed in many economically driven developments, it seems that Hong Kong’s consumerist priorities are often played out by real estate monopolies that devour opportunities for design innovation to take place.  This can be observed in the city’s public housing market which consists of ubiquitous, shoebox-like forms that are only differentiated by their flashy marketing schemes. This project aspires to stand apart from Hong Kong’s existing built environment by fostering aliveness in the realms of environmental, cultural, and formal endeavors. The title of the project, Niu (new) Shu (shoe), is a play on the pronunciation of the denoted Mandarin words for “twisting” and “tree” that also carries a connoted English context of being a new shoe to fit Hong Kong’s current and future growth. The towers in the complex grow from the ground and translate the lost space of nature into an enhanced environment of consumerism.  By using sustainability as a visible marketing tool to differentiate the design, the residential high-rise becomes a living organism that prospers from a blurring of what is residential enrichment and what is commercial capital.

By working within the constraints set forth by an economically driven market the complex finds a way to use design to create a more vibrant living environment while maintaining financial viability.  Typical Hong Kong residential developments exist as a series of eight towers set atop an amenity filled podium. The addition of overall height and the expansion of floorplates to include nine living units allow this project to condense the same number of units and a similar percentage of amenity space into five towers. Subsequently, space is freed around the base of the towers for agriculture and recreation while also creating a buffer between Niu Shu and neighboring high-rises.

The primary architectural design stems from a double skin system that is employed to create an intermediary space for hydroponic farming. The exterior structural skin affords large clear spaces to engulf the residential units in greenery. Each residence becomes a part of a small community within a tower that is identifiable by the crop that they produce. The crops are further coordinated by color to give each tower a distinguishable identity. Various community types are differentiated by the height of the agricultural atrium which they are part of. Through the creation of these communities the typical hierarchical arrangement of income levels is altered. The top level of a tower may longer draw the highest price or afford the most interesting opportunities, but rather the potential to access a certain communal garden midway up the tower may cause one community to be more desirable than the next.

Members of the communities can either be passively educated by their surroundings or may choose to become actively engaged in the farming and food processing of the complex in order to subsidize their living costs. The towers’ forms take advantage of the range of growing conditions that are needed for different crops by twisting at varying angles to allow or block light to the different products. In doing so, razor edge connections are made between towers on floors where public amenity is then inserted. The connections allow for the concept of individuality to exist, while maintaining an overall cohesiveness to the complex’s circulation and function.

As the towers move back to their figurative roots near the ground, the produce harvested in each tower enters a shared processing facility where workers prepare the items for shipping or immediate sale in the market. Distributed items carry the Niu Shu branding thus creating a broader exposure for the development as the produce is consumed throughout the Pearl River Delta. The market supplements the exposure by not only servicing the development’s residents, but also by drawing people from other developments because of its adjacency to a subway stop. As non-residents are exposed to the market, they cannot help but be confronted with the growing process which is engulfing the towers above them.  Niu Shu becomes a living billboard to attract new tenants, but, perhaps more importantly, a billboard that questions the situation of the non-residents’ ubiquitous amenities and overall living condition. Certainly the development would be a larger upfront investment, but the investment can be capitalized on while not stifling resident’s pocket books. Governments advocate more sustainable lifestyles, developers strive for differentiation, and city residents constantly seek meaningful relations to their living situation, yet all of these discussions exist as fragmented thought.  Through creative approaches to design and development, Niu Shu aspires to fuse these conversations into a cohesive and viable typology. Though the project certainly stands to be architecturally iconic initially, the hope is that this one development can spur a further citywide adaptation towards a more culturally, formally, and environmentally alive urban fabric.