Editors’ Choice
2024 Skyscraper Competition

Taoning Wen, Jaoning Zhang, Yuchen Zhang
China

Earth is the cradle of humanity, but humans cannot live in the cradle forever. The Earth’s ecosystem is just a speck in the vast ocean of the universe, small and fragile. Global climate change, rising sea levels, widespread infectious diseases, and even nuclear war… These issues have become the Sword of Damocles hanging over humanity’s head. Some people are looking to the universe: enabling humans to fly out of Earth in large numbers, move to other planets, and become an interstellar civilization, thereby greatly strengthening their resistance to environmental changes.

With the development of aviation technology in recent years, reusable rockets have become a hot topic. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 completed its first recovery on December 21, 2015, marking the transition of reusable rockets from theory to reality. Its emergence and maturity have greatly reduced the cost of rocket launches, making it possible to launch rockets on a large scale. Large-scale reusable rockets, represented by Starship, are undoubtedly the best choice for humans to leave Earth in large numbers under current technology. It can be foreseen that in the near future, commercial spaceflight and even space migration will form a certain scale based on reusable rockets.

However, the increasingly frequent rocket launches also cause huge environmental damage. According to a new study published by NOAA in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, if the number of rocket launches using hydrocarbon fuels increases by 10 times, it will damage the ozone layer and even change atmospheric circulation patterns. Pollution emissions during rocket launches and entry into the stratosphere are even more severe. At a time when humans cannot completely separate from the Earth’s environment, it is still necessary to find a suitable balance between protecting the Earth’s environment and exploring space. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2024 Skyscraper Competition

Lisa Suen, Youda Li, Yunxiao Ju, Linxin Wu, Ziyi Wang
China, Sweden

The Horn of Africa is facing a severe food crisis, and in 2023, the Horn of Africa experienced six consecutive rainy seasons without rainfall, resulting in a massive reduction in crop yields and is experiencing the worst drought since 1981, resulting in more than 1,900,000 people have been displaced and 13 million are facing severe hunger, sounding the “hunger alarm”.

This project is located in Oromia, Ethiopia. Because this is the central location of the Horn of Africa, it is convenient for external food aid. Moreover, this place has a plateau mountain climate, with a rainy season of 6 months and a dry season of 6 months a year, which provides conditions for water extraction and agricultural cultivation.
In addition, Ethiopia has a special geological feature called the African Rift Valley. The Great Rift Valley is about 700m wide, 500m deep, and thousands of meters long. The project was sited in the Great Rift Valley because the ground is cracked during the dry season. Only the windy and foggy conditions in the Rift Valley offer the possibility of extracting moisture during the dry season.
The project aims to create a composite Agricultural Community in Great Rift Valley, that integrates living, food planting, water storage, and shared space to solve the local food crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2025 Skyscraper Competition

Kim Min Sung, Kim Jun Ryeun, Park Do Hyun
South Korea

People rush to London. To accommodate everyone that has gushed into already saturated London, it modified its established density system. This naturally leads to an increase of floor space index and a redevelopment plan starting with old urban center that has lost its function.
Modern buildings are too easily demolished. Numerous buildings are forgotten in the name of development or redevelopment to fulfill the city’s density – whilst the cost, time and effort that are required to build a structure is neglected. The increase of urban density has been continuing for more than 300 years since the industrialization. Cities all over the world are trapped in this flow, continuously being smaller and higher. Major cities such as New York, London and Beijing has reached floor space ratio of 3300% today but sykscraper higher than existing buildings go up. Modern architecture has fallen into this viscious cycle of requidation and construction. At this point, we question ourselves. Is a building simply a vessel for accomodation? Should the memories and traces of people’s lives be rubbed off onto a flooding crowd? What will be the way to preserve various values as long as the building’s own lifespan while it exists in the same timeline as people? This will be a story about an architecture that ages with people’s memory – an architecture that freed itself from city’s hypertrophy and people’s desire system, an architecture that lasts for more than a century without being demolished with increasing population and rising buildings. Read the rest of this entry »

2024 Skyscraper Competition
Editors’ Choice

Hamed Ahaki Lake,  Seyedeh Fatemeh Mirmousavi, Seyed Hooman Heravi Talemi, Vahid Nazari Kangavari
Iran

Imagine a towering skyscraper, not just a monument of glass and steel, but a living, breathing organism. This is the vision of future cities built within colossal skyscrapers, inspired by the human nervous system and constructed using 3D printers fed by recycled iron and plastic, this approach not only reduces reliance on virgin resources but also tackles the ever-growing problem of environmental pollution.

These “neuron-cities” are managed by a swarm intelligence inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (MHN) and William Glasser’s theory of choice (GTC), taking resident well-being to the forefront of urban planning. Imagine sprawling pathways resembling branching neurons, connecting various levels and sections of the skyscraper-city. These pathways will be designed to be multifunctional, all house, along with other facilities are located here, serving as residential, transportation arteries, communication channels, and even housing utilities like water and energy distribution.

There would be nodes as a central hub, functioning like a city plaza, bringing together diverse functions such as commercial, educational, entertainment, healthcare centers, and park spaces. Spaceframes, structures built from interconnected struts and nodes, provide a strong and flexible framework for these neuron-cities. This design allows for adaptability and modularity, enabling the city to evolve and expand based on the needs of its residents. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2024 Skyscraper Competition

Hossein Amery, Hosein Mosavi, Amir Hosein Saiidi, Marzieh Hoseinvand
France

The attempt of the project ahead is to give an answer to the regeneration of ecosystem which is on the verge of destruction. An answer arising from an ancient cultural tradition. Iranians have always adhered to their traditions as well as to their ancient history, they turned diverse native and ethnic cultures into traditions and later into social and religious beliefs. They hold firm beliefs and customs about the burial of dead bodies and considered them as orders from Ahura Mazda and stuck to it. Zoroastrians believed that natural elements such as water, soil, fire and wind should not be contaminated, therefore they regarded burial or burning and drowning corpses to be something against religious rites and they considered it contrary to Zoroastrian orders to preserve the environment. To avoid this contamination, dead bodies is left exposed in an isolated structure, called a dakhma, or tower of silence, to decompose and be scavenged by vultures before the bones are collected and placed in an Ossuary.

These cylindrical buildings are now abandoned in most parts of Iran. One of the valuable sites with a collection of these buildings is Holy Mountain (Bibi Shahr Bano). Due to existing of rich cement mines since years ago, a cement factory was established near this mountain, which in multitudinous ways caused damage to the ecosystem of this ancient site. The majority of the irreparable damage that has already affected the ecosystem of the ancient mountain is the pollution caused by consumption of Mazut which is a low-quality heavy fuel oil so as to compensate for the lack of sufficient electricity needed in the factory. From early on Ossuary in fact, has acted as an environment-friendly catalyst and purifier to prevent the four main elements of nature mentioned earlier from getting contaminated. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Yang Zhao, Shi Qiu
United States

Traditional Asian Community has evolved for thousands of years with its own strong characteristics and deep meaning of social relationships that work for Asian people the best. As we all know, Asians like to live gregariously. One of the underlying reasons is that the early Asian food production were mainly through agriculture. And, agriculture needs to rely on collaboration, thus lead to group living. However, In the past two centuries, with the second and third industrial revolutions, industrialization has greatly affected the living patterns of Asians — small families live in segregated apartments, and family members also live in separate rooms. Over time, people would rather face their digital screens than talk to each other. As a result, traditional Asian residential communities stopped evolving and became history. We have to admit industrialization and technology are excellent strategies that solve the growing need for residences in modern cities, but it does not mean we need to abandon the meaningful heritage of social relationships and natural systems.

It’s time for us to rethink the wisdom of Asian dwellings, and integrate it with technology to serve the new generations. So, imagine in the future, we combine the best aspects of Asian traditional architectural principles, the industrial manufacturing and assembling process, together with digital technology and the informational advantages the future society would offer, what kind of future residential High-rises would look like and how can we solve the still growing need for living in the continuous urbanization? Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Zhaoxu Huang
China

Desertification is a phenomenon that the dry land ecosystems is constantly degraded due to the influence of climate and human activities. With the continuous progress of global industrialization, surface vegetation has been continuously destroyed, and persistent desertification threatens the poorest population in the world and the prospect of poverty reduction. Therefore, combating desertification has become a century-long problem that puzzles mankind. With the increasing concern of the international community about desertification, more and more countries and regions are carrying out afforestation activities. However, due to the single species and sparse number of vegetation, it is impossible to form a stable ecosystem and the effect is insufficient.

Although the undeveloped desert area are full of dangers, it is difficult to serve as a basis for human beings to transform nature. However, the desert contains a lot of valuable energy, and rational use of the desert can greatly reduce global warming caused by carbon emissions. The desert is both a crisis and an opportunity! We obtained all kinds of environmental and meteorological data about desert areas around the world through literature retrieval. By comparing and analyzing the environmental indicators of different areas, and according to the climatic conditions needed for plant growth, the design site of the skyscraper in Gurbantunggut Desert was finally selected. The desert is located in the middle of Junggar basin in northern Xinjiang, with an annual precipitation of about 70 ~ 150 mm and a wide variety of vegetation, which is suitable as a test site for initial desert transformation. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Runze Wu, Jingkun Sun, Jingyi Liang, Liying Yang, Yizhuo Dai, Pengyu Chen
China

Itaewon is a famous local business district and a bar street in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea, which is usually very popular on weekends. on the night of October 29, 2022，More than 150 people died in a mass stampede at Itaewon，Local media said it was the largest number of people killed in an accident in South Korea since the sinking of the passenger ship “Shiyue” in 2014.The night of the accident, Itaewon held a Halloween party, the number of people gathered nearby was approximately 100,000 people, the accident occurred in a long narrow ramp, and the injured were mostly young people. Among the people who died, except for a few in the front row who were trampled to death, more were crushed in the chest could not breathe, and eventually died of traumatic asphyxiation.

At the time of the accident, the whole alley was crowded with people, the part where the stampede occurred was a section approximately 5.7 meters long, and more than 300 people were packed in a space of approximately 18 square meters.The lack of response before the incident and the lack of effective limitations on the number of people, as well as the lack of guidance at the time of the incident, which led to the crowd getting together and not being able to find the direction of evacuation, are some of the important reasons for the stampede in Korea. Even though the subsequent Korean police and rescue forces arrived at the scene in large numbers after the stampede, the rescue forces were crowded at the periphery, because the huge crowd was difficult to evacuate quickly and could not implement effective rescue for the first time.For us, the most important thing is to learn from the mistakes and eliminate the hidden dangers. After all, urban governance is not just about how many high-rise buildings are built, but also about how to make people feel safer. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Fan Yiming, Wang Yue, He Kai
China

The threat of desertification is a global problem, which is directly manifested by the loss of productive land, the movement of sand dunes and dust storms. According to the data of IPCC, desertification now covers 46.2% of the global geographical area. It can be seen from the geographical distribution map of dry land and the population diagram of dry areas that many regions and countries in the world are affected by drought. Desertification is no longer a simple ecological environment problem, but has evolved into an economic and social problem, which brings poverty and social instability to human beings.

The building is located on the Mesopotamian plain in present-day Iraq, an alluvial plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Western Asia. Thousands of years ago, the fertile soil created by the annual flooding of two rivers gave birth to one of humanity’s earliest civilizations, the Mesopotamian Civilization. However, with the historical changes, soil salinization and desertification, the once glorious Mesopotamian civilization was gradually buried by sand and dust. Over the past two decades, Iraq and many other regions in the Middle East have been threatened by desertification. According to the Iraq Desertification Commission, up to 90% of Iraq’s land area is threatened by desertification, and 45% of its agricultural land is at risk of drought and desertification. Loss of vegetation, overgrazing, wartime deforestation, improper irrigation practices and water scarcity are some of the main causes of desertification in Iraq. According to the above problems, we decided to construct a new skyscraper that can control desertification of the land, and solve the desertification problem more effectively by means of technology to make the sand soil. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects and designers love a great sketching pencil and a great fountain pen. These are the main tools used to quickly communicate and pin down ideas. Drawings remain the genesis of ideas, which are later developed with the use of computer software.

In the world of fountain pens, there are very few options for a retractable nib. A retractable nib is one that comes out of the pen without the need to remove a cap- like a push-button ballpoint pen. It is very convenient because you can have the writing experience of a fountain pen, with the readiness of a ballpoint pen. You can start writing and sketching immediately without the need to remove a cap. For many years, the only two options available were the Vanishing Point fountain pen designed by Pilot in the 1960’s and the Lamy Dialog designed in 2009.

In early 2024, ēnsso unveiled the BOLT a new retractable fountain pen alternative with an innovative silicone seal at the tip that keeps the nib chamber air-tight. The silicone seal has an ‘X’ cut that allows the nib to go through and naturally seals off when the nib is retracted. For quick, one-hand operation, this pen relies on a bolt-action mechanism in which a knock at the end of the pen is pushed forward to extend the nib. As soon as the knock is moved away from the lock position, the spring automatically retracts the nib. This simple solution is ideal and has minimal components.

The BOLT is entirely precision-machined from grade-5 titanium for durability and lightness. It also comes equipped with an ink converter for bottled ink. Its nib system is interchangeable and nibs in fine point and medium point are offered. The pen is currently available to preorder on Kickstarter for $84.