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. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Hoi Wang Chan, Blake Perkins
United States

Special Mention

In 2007 over half of the world’s population had moved to a city. This shift from rural areas to cities poses a multifaceted problem for the urban context. The Alchemorphis tower unites these disparate worlds in a synergistic response to the environment, local community, and greater city.

New York City metro area ranks amongst the most populous urban centers in the world, with its average citizen using nearly 100 gallons of water daily. Much of this water is merely gray water which is processed with wastewater and eventually pumped into the bordering rivers as cleansed effluent. Utilizing its own influent from the Hudson River and neighborhood gray water supply, the alchemical tower recycles this discarded resource into valuable commodities for city use. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Sung-Wook Kim, UF Association
South Korea

Special Mention

The Metropolitan Veil 2019 is a sustainable skyscraper designed for a business area in Seoul. It is an investigation on urban memories and their interconnection in a single place. Thus, new programs emerge from the mix of economic, cultural, and environmental conditions.

Prefabricated slab units are stacked on top of each other to create frames that allow different programs. These frames also work as structural elements connected to the vertical cores. Sunlight is controlled by a series of layers that constitute the exterior envelope with photovoltaic cells on the southern façade. On the other hand, wind turbines are located on the big openings of the façade. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Jerome Frumar
Australia

Special Mention

Traditionally, high-rise buildings are predicated by maximum economic return and are thus associated with commercial endeavors and opulence. This project recasts the initial ambition for vertical expansion. It envisages a rapidly deployable building that will provide centrally located resources in disaster situations. Instant High-rise builds upon the visionary concepts of Buckminster Fuller by continuing his research into lightweight ‘synergetic’ structures and geometries. The tensegrity principle is explored for its potential to provide a feasible structural system that enables the deployment of an instant skyscraper in areas struck by disaster. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Julien Rousseau, Luca Battaglia, Ulisse Gnesda
France

Special Mention

The main focus of this investigation is to rethink the ‘skin’ of the skyscraper to generate renewable energies through the use of new materials and technologies.

Our idea is to design a new generation of towers with carbon shafts attached to the glazing that capture the wind and generate sufficient energy for the entire building. These shafts are flexible and oscillate with the wind and protect the interior from direct sunlight, reducing the greenhouse effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Han Jaekyu, Park Sang Mi, Kim Ji Hyun, Park Woo Young, Lee Kyoung Ho
South Korea

Special Mention

Urban Nebulizer is a type of skyscraper designed for the most polluted cities worldwide. The geometry of the tower is a continuous spiral with program ‘trays’. It has a central hollowed core where smog is cleaned by a series of filtering membranes that use water and vegetation. It is a vertical garden that could be located in the center of any city.

Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2009 Skyscraper Competition

Joanna Borek-Clement
United States

Special Mention

Creating a New Green Layer of Urban Life for Tokyo
Research has shown that strenuous physical activity in polluted cities increases our chance of breathing harmful particles. Sky-Terra is a new level of plazas for Tokyo. They are elevated 1,600 feet above ground and are formed by the roofs of individual skyscrapers joined together to structurally support each other- allowing for smaller footprints. Each building is a module able to be reconfigured in a variety of spatial patterns that could be implemented in any metropolis worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »

1st Place
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Elie Gamburg
United States

First Place

This is a proposal for a 720m tall skyscraper to be located above the existing Belarussky Train Station in Moscow, Russia. The program consists of a hotel, assembly, retail, cultural spaces, and apartments. These respond to the needs of the site, which serves as a major gateway to Moscow by road and rail. The main road to St. Petersburg runs through the site and is intersected by the main train line to Europe. Built in 1870, Belarussky Train Station is one of Moscow’s most important historical structures. It was celebrated throughout its history and earned the moniker ‘victory station’ for its role in shuttling Soviet troops to the German front during WWII, and for receiving the first trainloads of soldiers returning victorious after the war. Read the rest of this entry »

2nd Place
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Rugel Chiriboga, Ted Givens
United States

Second Place

Our project is based in Jurong East, Singapore. The site benefits from its adjacency to a mass transit line station and beautiful natural lake amenity. It is located between a Chinese garden and a heavy industrial district with large residential developments. Unfortunately, these residential developments do not take full advantage of sustainable building opportunities that are inherent in this region. Cultural richness and diversity in use, sustainability, and innovation particular to climatic influences in the region were primary drivers for our concept development. Our intent is to blend site specific sustainable strategies with a new interpretation of high rise design, derived from the juxtaposition of the vibrant complexity found in the traditional Malay village and the streamlined efficiency of modern Singapore. We sought clues from nature that could be utilized to develop a sustainable approach that would provide a stark contrast to the existing architectural landscape. The heavy use of gardens, both in the landscape and in the towers, provides a point of cultural departure in a sea of relentless housing blocks adjacent to our site. Read the rest of this entry »

3rd Place
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Alberto Fernández, Susana Ortega
Chile

Third Place

Huasco City is a port in the north of Chile. The city is a place of important agricultural development thanks to the Huasco River, but in the last decade the water flux decreased, which will probably lead to agriculture disappearance in the near future. A new strategy is required to obtain water from the Atacama Desert. In this place there is a climatic phenomenon called Camanchaca, dense coastal fog that has dynamic characteristic: condensation at great heights that is carried towards coastal zones by strong wind currents. Its origin is in the anticyclone of the Pacific Ocean that produces a layer of stratocumulus, covering the coastal strip from Peru to northern Chile. The base of the cloud is at 400 meters (with a variation of 200 meters) above sea level. The second layer contains minerals from the sea, in lower concentration than sea water. Read the rest of this entry »