Designed by Mohamed Hassan

Inspired by Ken Yeang, who states that “a bioclimatic skyscraper is a tall building whose built form is configured by design, using passive low-energy techniques to relate to the site’s climate and meteorological data, resulting in a tall building that is environmentally interactive, low-energy in embodiment and operations, and high-quality in performance”, this skyscraper is generated through the analysis of  the climatic conditions of the site using parametric and algorithmic architecture.

Environmental studies were translated to Grasshopper  to generate the desired form. An analysis of the Sun’s path was used to generate a voronoi shaded structural system while aerodynamic studies were used to design the profile curvature of the tower. Photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, and water recollection systems are some of the green aspects of the proposal.

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Dear Readers,

We are very excited to be celebrating the first anniversary of our print journal. It has been an unforgettable ride and an enormous satisfaction to discover and promote the work of excellent new designers that are pushing the boundaries of architectural design.   

We would like to show our gratitude and offer you a 50% off discount on our second issue ‘Skyscrapers of the Future’.  This offer is available worldwide all of June.

Thank you for an amazing year!

Skyscrapers of the Future

USA – 50% OFF One-year Anniversary Offer

International – 50% OFF One-year Anniversary Offer Read the rest of this entry »

Vertical urbanization has been much criticized during the last few years and it raises numerous discussions in France. Should we build skyscrapers in Paris? How can we integrate them into an environment where vertical living has not been used? When we consider existing skyscrapers we note an important loss of social exchange. It is necessary to rethink their spatial organization and its relationship with the existing urban fabric and create a structure that benefits the city. Read the rest of this entry »

The Vertical Wetland Tower designed by London-based architect William So is located on a flood-plain area of the Thames River in London.  It has been designed to allow systemically growth in over populated cities. It is a 50 storey construction covered with vegetation and equipped with recreational and cultural amenities.

The tower’s reinforced structure acts as a flooding barrier to the city and accommodates some of London’s new infrastructure. Each floor has been designed as variable modules for customized units. The completed tower will be a double helix with interwoven programs. While one helix contains the residences and offices the other incorporates green open spaces for recreational activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Volutes is a skyscraper conceived by Asami Takahashi and Jason Lim located in Singapore’s new marina. Our proposal is to pull upwards the urban fabric and create a helical volume. Public programs are wrapped around a central circulation core while six serpentine structures contain the private spaces. The morphology of the building results from the analysis of 6 control lines sweeping around the central core. The outer skin is linked to the main structure with spokes arranged in a hexagonal configuration.Volutes opens at the street level and closes at the top to allow direct sunlight into the city. Its porous skin maximizes ventilation and regulates the green parks and water reservoirs. Read the rest of this entry »

“Literally all architecture is about this question of the common world. / Then the question is, ‘which type, which style of architecture is adjusted to the task?’ […] / What is the successor to this style of modernist architecture? I am interested in pushing the designer into asking, “if you have to imagine that the world does not consist of matters of fact, but instead of matters of concern, what happens with the concepts of function, sobriety, public space, etc.?” / [T]he crisis of representation is largely due to the fact that people define politics in too narrow of a sense; that is, it is always defined in terms of race, gender, power and class relations —a very limited repertoire. […] / [I] think the crisis of representation today occurs because it is very difficult to speak about the production of things with this limited repertoire. This repertoire blocks you at the entry of science and technology, and architecture is part of science and technology. / A new beginning would be —in contrast to the world of objects we’re imagining now— about how the architect displays a thing […].”    – Bruno Latour¹

Housing always creates a “public”², and when talking about public housing this concept becomes all the more interesting. A picture comes to mind, which includes the residents, the architects, the local authorities, the civil servants, the location, the land owners, the public policy, the urban regulations, the new infrastructures, the municipal supplies, the new streets, the constructor, the construction company, the workers, the construction materials, the local technologies, the budget, the schedule, the students, the volunteers, the existing public amenities, the views, the neighbors, the neighborhood, the district, the city, the climate… In addition, the future inhabitants have their ambitions, dreams, new living expectations, desire of belonging to a specific community and place. Architects dream of designing something more than a “building”, they want to go beyond building for their citizens. The administrators have realized that an intelligent coordination of relocation, appropriate land, funding, and schedule, could turn the ruling conventions of the housing real estate market around and become a revolutionary means for radical urban regeneration that could give the opportunity to poor people to own their home and shape their neighborhood. Read the rest of this entry »

Although lacking an intriguing name, the “Multi-Storey Building” designed by Athens-based Kois Associated Architects has a very intriguing facade. Backed up against a living green wall, the mixed use building for Amman, Jordon, was designed after a study of Jordanian architecture, which informed the final volume of the building. A traditional block glass walled building is covered in a veil that has openings or shadings depending on the corresponding need for the program on that level. The veil acts as a boundary to the city, and the entrances on the street level are like gates into the building, providing a transition zone to those entering. Read the rest of this entry »

The Strata Tower, a forty-story, luxury residential building designed by architects Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture of Asymptote, has broken ground on Al Raha Beach and is now under construction. The tower is scheduled for completion in early 2011 and, at a height of 160 meters, will be the tallest building in the Al Dana precinct, the centerpiece of Aldar Properties PJSC’s prestigious Al Raha Beach development. The project and development was showcased at Cityscape Abu Dhabi from May 13–15, 2008. The landmark Strata Tower is designed to signify a dignified and important future for Abu Dhabi and the region.

As a signature architectural statement, the Strata Tower’s articulate, striking physical presence seeks to encapsulate meaning through the use of abstract form drawn from both local cultural landscapes and motifs and dynamic forces of global influence. The Strata Tower’s design utilizes primarily mathematical means in its design to achieve both a poetic, as well as highly pertinent, architecture for the UAE, a region in flux with ambitions for continued rapid growth. Read the rest of this entry »

Ideal forms or adaptive geometries? Presented with the problem of resolving a complex program, such as housing, within a difficult site, architects usually pursue one of these two strategies.  They can either resolve the abstract issue of program, or address the concrete problem of context. The former becomes predicated on a pure internal logic, while the latter becomes an issue of adapting to external contingencies. A schism is created between idealized solutions to the problems of Housing, for example, and attempts to most fully ingratiate architecture with its surrounding context.

Those projects that set out to generate a ‘perfect’ programmatic or conceptual solution usually achieve this by disengaging themselves from their surroundings, resolving their formal aspects in isolation. Often the way this is achieved is by literally lifting the projects out of their sites, as was proposed by Le Corbusier when he shifted his buildings onto pilotis in the pursuit of a true ‘machine for living.’ Steven Holl’s nearly completed Vanke Center, in Shenzen, China is also lifted up off of its site, but unlike its modern progenitors this lift allows the project to marry the two halves of what had previously been a dichotomy of purpose. The lift constructs a more active relationship to site, while reinvigorating the bar building as an archetypal residential typology. The project points to a future paradigm where internally derived, conceptually pure prototypes are subtly co-opted to create new forms of contextuality. Read the rest of this entry »

Critical Practice is a public arts group based at the University of the Arts, London. They operate under the proposition that developing aesthetic and programmatic space is a radial rather than lineal process and created the installation Parade to explore the effectiveness of their process in the public square. Made from 4300 black milk crates tied together with zip ties the structure’s components were minimized in order to focus on special relationships during the design and assembly process. It was constructed on the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea Collage of Arts and Design during the third week of May, 2010. Read the rest of this entry »