Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Thibaut Deprez
France

Light and resistant, bamboo is traditionally used as a building material in numerous regions around the globe. Over time, its allocation was somewhat modified, especially in Asia. Henceforth, within great cities, it is restricted to being used as a building construction support. In this way, it was used for the scaffolding of five of the greatest skyscrapers in the world. Bamboo scaffolding served the splendor of these constructions, but also contributed to the erection of many much more modest towers. These towers make us feel ill at ease because of the harshness and coldness of their frontages. The virtually infinite stacking of identical storeys annihilates all human expressions and interactions. Abruptly cloned, these towers produce oppressing dormitory towns.

The stance of this project is set up around the observation of the harshness of these towers and to suggest a solution. The project offers to use bamboo scaffoldings as a driving force to promote the revival of these buildings. By making them permanent and inseparable from the construction. They endow the towers with an external surface which the inhabitants can directly claim and where life can expand. They produce a net which can be fashioned according to the circumstances, specific to each building and give each one a true identity. They promote the emergence of authentic vertical gardens in places where density does not allow the establishment of horizontal gardens. Furthermore, they favor the stabilization of structures during earthquakes and support an ecological production of energy – towers and bamboo scaffoldings achieve symbiosis. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Chris Thackrey, Steven Ma, Bao An Nguyen Phuoc, Christos Koukis, Matus Nedecky, Stefan Turcovsky
United States

The PleXus Tower emerges from the banks of the West Hong Kong Harbor as a distribution of disjointed structures, initially finding itself amidst the neighboring ferry terminal. The structure starts out as distributed pods reaching out to connect with the city’s transportation fabric, accepting traffic from the water in the form of boats, ferries, and other water vehicles. This misfit arrangement of structural pods weaves into alignment with the Macau terminal to greatly increase the scale of the transportation hub. Bridged together by connected pipelines over the water, these pods work in harmony with the existing Macau Ferry Terminal to expediently move people towards the inner structure. This assembly forms a podium for the first segment of the tower, which emerges as a parking structure accessible from the highway network tangent to the tower.

Located at the water’s edge next to the Macau Ferry Terminal, the tower’s design varies in both its circulation and organization to control the speed at which it receives and negotiates the flow of traffic to optimize movement around and inside the structure.

As you move inward from the receiving pods, the main structure begins to evolve its own function. First is a horizontal parking structure on the lower levels of the main building, which emerges as a parking structure accessible from the connected highway network to efficiently receive car traffic. As you move up the main structure, business and shopping space is available, all accessible by car to the highest level of the tower. The upper reaches of the towers are set aside for residential space, high above the noise of the city, providing a living area that incorporates spectacular views of the dynamic city skyline. A heliport on top of the structure can receive air traffic from above.

The solid form on the south side of the main tower receives solar energy during the day, providing power to the building. The skin is breathable with numerous openings designed to overlap each other, undulating throughout, allowing carbon dioxide to easily filter out from the designated parking areas on the lower levels. Each parking level will also utilize foliage to further filter carbon dioxide from the air helping to reduce pollution in Hong Kong.

The PleXus tower was conceived as a segmented, but highly connected network of major transportation functions, as well as housing conventional program. The shift in the way the tower design is read, as well as in the functionality of each segment, provides greater programmatic control. Residential is accessible yet private, parking is convenient, and circulation through the ground-level public space is able to provoke interest. At night, lights will glow from the panels, reminding us of the connections these segments share as well as blending in with Hong Kong’s unique night skyline. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Umarov Alexey
Russia

The Hyper Filter Skyscraper recognizes the threat of environmental pollution to Earth. Under today’s levels of pollution, harmful substances spread over hundreds of kilometers and a whole region and even a country could represent a single pollution source.

The Hyper Filter Skyscraper is designed to inhale carbon dioxide and other harmful gases in cities and exhale concentrated oxygen. The skin of the project is made out of long pipe filters that ensure the cleaning process. While clean air is released to the atmosphere, all the harmful substances are stored for use in the chemical industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Yang Siqi, Zhan Beidi, Zhao Renbo, Zhang Tianshuo
China

China’s explosive economy has left the world in awe but the country is paying a big price as the “factory of the world” is getting polluted at an alarming speed. Chinese cities are now characterized by an unhealthy hazy weather as the result of large amounts of suspended particles in the air.

The purpose of Project Blue is to transform suspended particles into green energy by creating an enormous upside down cooling tower with a multi-tubular cyclic desulfurization system that produces nitrogen and sulfur. When both elements are combined with the atmospheres surplus of carbon monoxide the result is water coal that would later be transformed methane and used as green energy through a low-pressure reaction called low pressure efficient mathanation – a physical-chemical process to generate methane from a mixture of various gases out of biomass fermentation or thermo-chemical gasification. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Eric Nakajima
New Zealand

With bigger and worse natural disasters appearing on the news with no signs of slowing down, we need to rethink how cities should rebuild. When a city is destroyed, it is a sign that the city’s infrastructure is not suitable for the environmental conditions of that particular location. With so much variation of inherent environmental properties around the globe, why do we globalize a singular infrastructural system?

Christchurch, New Zealand is one city that has recently been devastated by an earthquake. With citywide liquefaction destroying infrastructure, it is clear that the typical method of construction is not suited for such soil condition. The immediate response by the city is to artificially condition the soil for better building surface, but this method of forcing nature to take form of an ideal environment to perpetuate the same construction technique seems time consuming and wasteful.

The proposal is a system that adapts into the current environmental conditions without the need for tweaking, alteration or correction. For the new city, unstable soil becomes a necessity and not a burden as the structure buries and sinks into the ground by exploiting the phenomenon of liquefaction. This project becomes an example of rethinking adaptation by responding to the nature of site without being constrained by traditional methods. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Matt Bowles, Chad Kellogg
United States

The most dynamic cities of the 21st century, such as New York, are anthropomorphic alloys that act as engines for innovation and social cohesion. These cities, with their continually evolving demographics, will forge the dynamic societies of the future. With the rapid rise of near instantaneous communication, a city’s’ livability has gained prominence as an attractor for top minds. In order to secure its future as the leading global center, New York needs to continue to grow in smart ways. We see the opportunity to draw the energy of Manhattan out into the four other boroughs without disrupting existing land use. We propose a residential typology rooted in the remnant spaces surrounding the intersection of transportation infrastructure, such as elevated train lines and freeway interchanges. With the proposed design and specified materials, we aim to optimize a heterogeneous and highly linked set of living environments capturing the air rights above these systems.

The combination of escalating land prices and the acceleration of city migration have made urban renewal based modes of densification unfit for the contemporary city. Urban Alloy is the symbiotic repurposing of the air rights above transportation corridors in New York. Urban planners have long touted the benefits of greater housing density near public transportation hubs – Urban Alloy proposes the advancement of this idea by locating the system directly on the intersections between surface and elevated train lines. We have chosen the intersection of the LIRR and the 7 trains as a test case. The paradigm of one-size fits all is obsolete. Urban citizens want diverse living situations where they can work, play, eat and rest within a pedestrian zone. As technology creates the market desire and a conditioning for personalization, society is more willing to pay a premium for spaces that are tailored to their particular needs. The towers’ design facilitates a continuous blend of program and space types that are accommodated by a spectrum of floor heights and enclosure conditions.

The skin concept reflects a desire to optimize shading and day lighting performance on the surface of a complex volume. The surface of the towers transitions from a cylindrical to a triangular extrusion across its height in relation to the blend in floor heights. A composite or alloy of multiple flexible systems is required to optimize a skin in which every point has a unique environmental exposure. The system developed for this structure is deployed on a grid that follows the geometric directionality of the surface. At each intersection of the grid the normal of the surface is analyzed against its optimal solar shading and daylight transmitting requirements. An authored algorithm then generates vertical and horizontal fin profiles that blend with profiles at adjacent intersections. The result is an optimized system of decorative metal fins that are unique but fabricated with the logic and process described below.

The steel diagrid structural system can efficiently be constructed with each unique member cut by an automated system. GPS systems can handle the geometric complexity of the overall structure via locating each member during the erection process. Cantilevers benefit from a favorable strength to weight ratio allowing large cantilevers and small footprints. With a high-recycled content and positive life cycle analysis the unitized curtain wall system will also be fabricated with rapid automated manufacturing processes. Precision and slender structural profile that maximizes views and daylight skin the entire building. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Ziwei Song
United States

Los Angeles freeway system segregates the city’s fabric restricting urban activities to single locations. Similarly, skyscrapers exacerbate this condition of segregation instead of encouraging urban integration. The envisioned vertical city would bridge over freeway interruptions and connect the four quadrants around 101 and 110 freeways as a single architectural organism while boosting cultural exchange, urban activities, and social interaction.

The interchange 101 and 110 breaks Los Angeles east urban fabric into four disconnected quadrants: Downtown, Chinatown, Echo Park, and Temple Beaudry. The four quadrants have distinct cultural and social differences, lacking a coherent urban tissue. Moreover, the leftover space around the freeways reaches over 27 acre. Skyvillage aims to reclaim this terrain vague and provide green filtering towers to clean the freeways and also articulate various programs to revitalize the disconnected urban fabric. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Tsang Aron Wai Chun
Hong Kong

The project is designed in the copper Ruashi mine in Lubumbashi, Congo which is predicted to stop production in 2020. The mine would then be abandoned and left as an enormous urban void surrounded by a rapidly expanding city.

The Here-After projects seeks to make use of the left over space, waste soil, and sulfuric acid from the mine drainage and former copper production. A machine will reuse the waste soil to neutralize the sulfuric acid, which in turn will be used to erode the land to be used as raw buildings blocks for the project.

As the machine operates, starting from the South end, the remaining structures from the neutralization process would be reconfigured as a university campus. Throughout the building process the contour, the campus, and the public spaces would continuously change their relationships and form. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

R. Anthony Fieldman, former Design Principal and Lead Project Designer for Perkins+Will
Perkins+Will, Architects of Record
United States

The Blossom Tower in Kuala Lumpur has created an opportunity for Malaysia to lead the world in defining the 21st Century tower – uniting social, commercial and environmental agendas in a new symbol for Malaysian cultural ambitions.

Kuala Lumpur has several icons, among them the KL Tower and Petronas Twin Towers; each employs a well-known typology (a sky needle and twin gateway, respectively) that contributes a strong and defining silhouette to the skyline that adds to Malaysia’s assets. Yet, there is room for a third icon – one that builds on sustainable leadership, using one of Nature’s perfect engines as its highly functioning symbol. The Blossom Tower takes its form from Malaysia’s national flower, the Hibiscus, for a number of reasons. Expanding in size over its height, the tower announces its presence in the sky – not by poking it like its neighbors, but by reaching up, outstretched, to embrace and harness power. Like the crown of a flower, the top floor of the tower has 29% more area than its base, capturing maximum solar energy and water for use in the tower’s systems.

Blossom Tower is designed for people, profit and the planet, reflecting an emerging awareness that our buildings must deliver value beyond simple economics – that they must speak to the highest aspirations of society. In this context, Blossom Tower creates social value for a complex and varied people by allocating 2.5% of the tower toward public uses, including a sculpture park and outdoor performance spaces at the tower base; a new Museum of People inside the tower devoted to the guiding principles of the Rukun Negara; and a Sky Walk and cafe atop the crown; the latter two connected by a 20-story tall Hall of Hibiscuses – a vertical, living garden celebrating the National flower of Malaysia.

By inverting the form of the common tapered tower and providing 29% more commercial lease area and perimeter windows at the top, the Tower creates financial value for investors and tenant businesses where views, daylight and visibility are best. Additionally, the tower is designed around a ‘village’ concept, in which multiple-key tenants are provided exclusive drop-offs, entrances and branded sky-lobbies served by shuttle elevators, creating a feeling of multiple towers in one.

Crowning the tower, the innovative Blossom is an iconic and optimistic symbol that speaks to the aspirations of the tower’s environmental leadership agenda by performing several sustainable functions. Its petals spanning over a 75m radius, the Blossom collects the sun’s energy over 100% of its surfaces via solar hot water collection tubes. Paired with on-site desiccants, the petals capture enough heat energy to dehumidify the entire tower’s air supply. Additional PV panels are located on the east and west facades, where the yield is greater than 40 watts/sm. 10% additional shade is created by the undulation of the tower’s form in addition to the shade from the structure’s broad reaches that protect visitors to the Sky Walk (observation deck) and the tower roof itself, from the greatest daily energy loads. Lastly, storm water is transferred to a cistern 20 stories below to irrigate on-site landscape, including the Hall of Hibiscuses.

The ethos outlined above resonates well with Malaysia’s seminal social contract – the Rukun Negara – which describes a society that embraces the unity, democracy and inclusivity of its people; the equitable sharing of its economic and natural resources; and the advancement of its progressive, modern leadership for society as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition

Sung Jin Cho
South Korea

Globally, millions of tons of trash enter the ocean each year. Between 60 and 80 percent of it is land-based and the rest is from ocean-based operations. Due to ocean currents, this plastic waste collects in particular areas of our global ocean. Such a region of accumulated plastic debris is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, where the prevailing ocean currents have created a large mass of tiny particles of plastics, which have resulted in a “plastic soup” commonly referred as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). GPGP is twice the size of Texas and contains six times more plastic than plankton biomass. As plastic does not biodegrade, it poses a threat to thousands of marine animals.

Seawer proposes to install a huge drainage hole 550 meters in diameter and 300 meters in depth in the middle of the GPGP. The project would engulf all kinds of floating trash filled with seawater. Seawer consists of five layers of baleen filters, which separate particles and fluids. The plastic particles collected from filters are taken to a recycling plant atop of the structure while seawater is filtered and stored in a large sedimentation tank at the bottom to be further cleaned and released into the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »