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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Akram Fahmi
United Kingdom

The Iceberg Autonomy is an enclave, a seascraper of suspended oil collectors and separators – a new water-world in constant navigation. It is a drifting political territory of temporary autonomy occupied by a maritime mining and refining community that is searching and hunting for suspended oil plumes in the pelagic depths of our oceans – lost oil, forgotten and unclaimed through leakages, industrial run off, and devastating spillages.

The Icebergs hunt the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres where the majority of oil spills have occurred. It is known that oil plumes of approximately 300 square kilometers and 10 kilometers deep exist in this area. These are blankets of poison, detrimental to all marine life that blocks the sunlight necessary for phytoplankton and other photosynthesizing marine flora. This phenomenon increases the amount of carbon dioxide and acidity levels that causes catastrophic coral reef bleaching, as well as the death of local marine ecosystems. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

UseCollective
Francisco Villeda, Heechan Park, Wouter Dons, Sandra Fleischmann
Denmark

This project examines the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) as a basis to rethink the way we inhabit cities, how the built environment has modified them, and how global economic interests such as tourism, sustainability, and mass consumption relate to one another.

Tourist City is a proposed cluster of mega-structures in Cancun, Mexico that will eliminate the unplanned urban sprawl and bring back to life the once pristine environment. The main concept is to concentrate an efficient infrastructure network in very small areas with tourist skyscrapers where visitors and workers will share the same facilities and resources. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Metarchitects
Enrico Tognoni, Federico Tinti, Davide Mariani
Italy

The Rhizome Tower is a proposal that explores the creation of an underground city. It is the response to abrupt climate changes and other environmental catastrophes. The main idea is to develop a ‘Groundscraper’ that harvests natural resources above and below ground while creating a new living typology.

The project is divided in four different layers, organized around a central core that is open to the light. The first layer is above the surface and contains the recreational, and food production facilities, with agriculture fields, farms, and glasshouses. The entire façade is covered with photovoltaic cells to harvest solar energy and specific locations are also equipped with wind turbines. The second layer, approximately 60 levels, is the residential part, with a diverse range of living quarters according to family sizes. The third and fourth layers are used as offices, and service areas with the deepest part of the project dedicated to the study and harvest of geothermal energy. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

John Houser
United States

The unprecedented population growth of mega-cites around the world requires the sustained increase of urban density. Over the past century the pressure from population growth was relieved with the vertical expansion of the city. To fulfill the population demands of tomorrow, growth in building density will be forced to expand in all axes.

Situated above the existing urban fabric, this building occupies the space between 22nd and 14th street and 6th and 7th avenue in New York City. The size of the structure creates interdependency, and allows for the formation of new communities within the already-dense housing grid. Woven into the residential fabric of the grid, large office towers provide a workplace for the residents of the structure. These towers unfold to allow for a large public park cut high above the city, maintaining the necessary public access to nature. Far removed from the intensity of urban life, the park provides residents and visitors an escape to nature while still maintaining a unique visual link with the city. The building is interconnected with a massive expansion of the current New York subway system. Trains within the structure move in all directions, servicing stations at all levels. Stations are embedded within the grid structure and linked to pedestrian bridges which act as the main arteries of transportation. The collection of these parts reaches a critical mass, allowing the structure to exist as an autonomous entity within the city, a new radical prototype for a 6th borough. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Giorgi Khmaladze
Republic of Georgia

The proposed building is located in Singapore’s waterfront and will serve as an extension to the existing financial district. Considering Singapore’s climate and its insufficient water resources, the emphasis on the design is set on building strategies to utilize natural ventilation, rainwater and provide shaded outdoor spaces. In addition, the project seeks to create the perfect home with its own garden and in close proximity to Singapore’s downtown.

The tower is positioned at a 20 degree angle to the site to face the nearby waterfront. It is porous and allows the wind to pass through. This structural strategy creates a vast shaded atrium with bridges that connect the two sides of the tower, serve as extra structural support, and accommodate various mixed-use programs.

The base, which resembles a terrain with rich vegetation, forms two outdoor swimming pools, public gardens, and sports facilities. A huge water reservoir for rainwater stretches along the entire building across the atrium while connecting the outdoor pools. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Luis Quinones
United States

In challenging the typology of a skyscraper this proposal considers an alternative set of criteria to reexamine habitation, construction, and organizational logic. In examining our global trajectory resulting in issues of overpopulation and depletion of natural resources, this project proposes a developmental shift away from the Earth. The chosen site for this project is on the Shackleton Crater Rim on the South Pole of the Moon.

The Moon was chosen as a testing ground for its ability to depart from the traditional constraints we find on Earth. There are limitations, such as low gravity, non-existent weather, and an abundance of unexploited natural resources such as large traces of frozen water and hydroxyl gases. These are particularly useful if combined, with the use of Regenerative Fuel Cells, where the process of electrolysis is proposed as means of sustaining energy and life by extracting the hydrogen and oxygen molecules from the water. In order to maximize solar gain due to the low oblique angle of the Sun, the skyscraper is the optimal building typology. However, this verticality is not solely expressed above the lunar surface. Instead a nested verticality of embedded towers deep below the surface provides protection from radiation, meteor impacts, and temperature differentials. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Andrew Chow Wai Tat, Tao Huang, Xue Liang Zhang
Malaysia and China

The modern Olympic Games have been a platform for the host country to present its culture and wealth to the world. The amount of energy, time, and resources invested for a two-and-a-half week of games is seen by many as a waste of infrastructure. One of the main problems is what has been defined as the ‘post-Olympic syndrome’, in which large urban areas comprised of Olympic villas and stadiums become isolated after the games. These lavish structures are rarely used afterwards and steady deterioration becomes a norm.

The main idea behind the Floating Olympic Complex is to create the first vertical Olympic architecture with large-scale inverted skyscrapers that will serve as host to the games and will later be transformed into a floating city with housing, offices, recreational areas, and infrastructure already in place.

The idea of the inverted tower draws inspiration from an umbrella shell structure, mushroom, and stalactite formations. The slim structural elements are able to support massive platforms and cantilevered volumes through an ingenious branching system and cluster of structural elements. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Borja Muguiro
United Kingdom

This proposal imagines a world where the natural wilderness of the arctic is bisected by the largest shipping canal ever built and becomes a trading post for the world’s freight industry and the new oil and gas exploration.

Slicing vertically through the Arctic ice-shelf, the structure is an architectural representation of the corporate struggle with nature. The whole structure reacts to nature by using the power of the wind, ice, and water. Its conceptual research is based on globalization and our dependency on shipping freights as the moving parts of consumerism. The North Pole Skyscraper is an open structure that holds containers in multiple levels or platforms that serve as transaction posts between countries. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Benjamin Feenstra, Jelmer Frank Wijnia
The Netherlands

Imagine a day where you are video conferencing, playing golf, working out, having a face to face meeting with your physician, watching a movie on a giant screen, and hanging out with some friends in a bar, without ever leaving your apartment on the 20th floor. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, it’s possible with the ‘On Demand Experience’.

The concept behind the ‘On Demand Experience’ is simple. Instead of going to different places, the facilities come to you. Simply request the desired space with your computer and the request will be processed by the warehouse connected to your building. Your space will arrive as an equipped ‘box’ that plugs into your apartment. Several boxes can dock in a single apartment at the same time and everything is available on demand. So whether your desire is to play golf, work out or have a lunch meeting, just let the warehouse know! This is the ultimate mixed-use building where apartments blend with different functions and services, the hub of your professional and social life. Read the rest of this entry »