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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Kostas Grigoriadis, Alex Robles – Palacio, Irene Shamma, Pavlos Fereos
United Kingdom

The project is a housing proposal for the Hudson Yards area of New York, which is currently occupied by a train depot that forms a recess in the continuity of the ground plane at pedestrian level. Acting as a physical division, the depot prohibits any connections of the Midtown part of Manhattan to the Hudson River while also creating a programmatic boundary with transportation and industrial uses bordering the adjacent residential and commercial areas.

Urban Reef addresses these problems of localized ground discontinuity and programmatic and physical isolation within a larger urban area by proposing a highly connected three-dimensional network of housing integrated with commercial as well as recreational uses. Working to a brief of three thousand housing units, the normative isolated high-rise building type found in New York, is replaced by a series of mid rise buildings that incline to minimize structural spans and interconnect in order to maximize the area available for housing and communal space development. Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Vincent Barué, Nicolas Boutet,  Olivier Brouard
France

The 70’s urban development, born from a political decision and flourishing economic period, has left us a harmful point of view for living in skyscrapers worldwide.

Faced with an increasing population, we tend to be more concerned with providing homes to inhabitants and stacking the apartments on top of each other at a good cost ratio rather than looking at the ecological and durable aspect of buildings. Over the years, each architectural era tends to declare that it is the right way to build cities, but today cities reveal the human work of the past decades, showing also some mistakes which were considered as the truth at that time. 

Presently, we notice that Carbon dioxide rates have reached a crucial level. We are now switching to a new building generation, taking into account the environment through thermal loss reduction. In many cities around the world, real estate prices are climbing and building renovations are thriving more than ever before. Almost 70 % of present buildings will continue to exist into the next century. Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Ming Tang
United States

Interlock: Architecture + Nature
The central feature of this project is the design of a new skyscraper typology for ensuring it will provide a coherent natural environment without fragmenting the urban living from the natural world.  By interlocking the green soft tissue into solid architectural structure, this skyscraper reveals and reclaims the characteristics of cellular automation generated interlock forms. Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Thomas Favre-Bulle, Mathieu Hefti, Simon Potier
Switzerland

An interactive engine for the design of reactive architecture.

Many skyscraper projects are pixelated stacks of boxes. Typological Organizer is a robust architectural ‘engine’ that refers to such projects but also adds both complexity handling and real-time reactivity capability. The engine does this by setting up an automated process of spatialization driven by internal typological parameters and external environmental factors.

Topologies
For the specific purpose of this project, we chose to work on a purely housing program, but the process can be easily expanded to other program types, such as offices or commercial. The housing types are described as topological networks, with geometrical dimensions and formalized qualities. Each functional room (could be foyer, bedroom, great room, etc.) is a node in the network with specific given dimensions and desirable circulation connections. Each one can also be given qualitative connections to the exterior, like orientation sensitivity, wet connection to core or terrace adjunction.

Spatialization
The spatialization of the thus typologically-defined network uses a dynamic particle/spring physical simulation. A Java library has been specifically written for the purpose of the project, integrating open source content in the matter of physical simulation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Violeta Sabaliauskaite, Lukas Gadeikis
Lithuania / United Kingdom

Entering 21st century, massive city mazes and high speed is everyday reality and frequently changing our working and living location has become almost a necessity. The SKY-BRIDGE is designed for speeding up this changeability. This is an alternative network of transportation with integrated settlement capability. The SKY-BRIDGE is the idea taken from our ancestors. A Combination of transport networks and skyscrapers follows the basic logic how settlements were created – along rivers and roads with free movement of its dwellers.

Nowadays, migration is much more intensive than in ancient times. Two thirds of the US population move every 5 years. More than one million people move out of the US yearly. The most active age group is 18-34 year olds. The main reason for their movement is change in location of work and education. But still we live far away from work. Londoners spend around 225 hours per year commuting to work. The numbers are rising all around the world as the current migration trend is towards cities. Today more than half of the world population is living in cities, and as building activity increases there is more pressure on poor and overcrowded transport system. Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Rocky Marchant, Ergin Birinci
United Kingdom

Damascus was voted the Arab Capital of Culture in 2008, and is also the capital of Syria. In it’s past it has been the capital of empires and located at the centre of the silk route and has always been a hive of trading. Because of this it is very proud of it’s historical context and is trying to improve it’s cultural and business facilities. 

The site chosen is at the centre of the New City, at the junction of the business and cultural axis. Because of this there is a great desire for development in this area. Having a train station and university as a neighbor emphasizes the demand for development, especially as at the moment there is no clear connection between the station, the university and the sports facilities Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Anton Markus Pasing
Germany

Preface
“The sky switches on daylight for us – or the shower. We are small gods, mere gods of the machine which is our highest. Our universe is a huge motor, and yet we are dying of boredom. In the midst of fullness, there is an insidious dragon gnawing at our hearts.” – D.H. Lawrence

About
The basic idea of Natwalk 2.0 is based on the assumption that as highly developed descendents of our species, machines will more readily understand the significance of an ecological renewal than we human beings. Moreover, they act with an ethical and social conscience. The origin of the machines is knowingly left in the dark. Read the rest of this entry »

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Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition

Nikola Stojkovic, Rajan Garic
Serbia

Compress is a specially designed dynamic system which provides instant space for variety of use.

Environmental, social and economic disturbances cause significant fluctuation among people. Many are left in danger and the need for shelter comes only second after basic necessities. In such case architecture plays important part in reducing the effects and providing basis for restoring continuity. This project examines the possibilities of creating First Aid Skyscraper (called Compress), easily transported in standard shipping containers and deployed all over the world. Location for this project can be anywhere from Haiti to Afghanistan. It is designed as first building on site after accidents. It shares almost military aesthetics and is intended to be in the front rows. As such it can respond to any need and provide first aid, accommodation or shelter for scientific research. Read the rest of this entry »

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UPDATE: WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON MARCH 8, 2010

After several years of organizing the annual Skyscraper Competition it has become a renowned architectural prize around the world. The best projects of each competition are widely published in architecture, design, and fashion journals, as well as in technology, business, and entertainment magazines. The winning projects are also featured in websites, television documentaries, and galleries.

We would like to invite students and professional architects, engineers, and designers to take part in the 2010 Skyscraper Competition. The main idea of this contest is to examine the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the skyscraper and the community, and the skyscraper and urban living. Read the rest of this entry »