Yi-Yun Lin, Jing Guo, Narek Mirzaei, Dung Minh Le
United States

The representation of architecture in a city is the representation of its people. A tightly packed formation of buildings illustrated a system of human networks. Such cluster of networks illustrates the efficiency of the society, but it can also be cruel. As at times pure functionality is what a city becomes.

In many districts inside Tokyo Metropolis, one can notice formalities, traditions, selflessness for the greater good, and obedience to the strict societal norms remained persistent as the age long guiding principles in society that many citizens seemingly have no escape of. These guiding principles had made the society into an invisible beast, dominating over the general population. Individuals who cannot function to a certain standards will be shunned upon by the peers, by family, and by society. The daily burden of doing the best you could only to fit into the surrounding environment builds up within the individual. Traversing through the streets, the expression-less pedestrians, the cold concrete jungles and the formality of large building facades only sets a reminder that there are limited options for self-expression and obstacles for true human connection. The true connection an individual can really embrace are from people in the similar situation, people who also seek escapism, a temporary escape to a world that is kind, connective, and understanding. Read the rest of this entry »

Silvia Angeli, Sophie Angrilli
Italy

The project is located in the southern part of Tokyo, Japan. The area is adjacent to Hamarikyu Gardens where the Skyscraper wants to stand out against the adjoining buildings. The project’s goal is to show and help the huge problem of high suicide’s rate among young people (6-24) in the city of Tokyo. This problem is affecting Japanese’s population for many decades; the origin of this vast problematic, according to our analysis, lies in the society itself. Individualistic culture, lack of people’s care and strong competition inside the educational system are driving young people to develop strong feelings of anxiety and pressure to stand out in order to gain a position in the world of work. The fear of failure is not challenged with the support of family and friends but, on the contrary, is repressed until becoming fatal. Indeed the day with the highest number of suicides is the first day of school. Moreover, Japanese’s culture has not a concept of soul as is known in occidental culture, so that suicide is seen as a solution and preferred to failure. That’s why the location of the building has also been chosen according to the distance with the main schools. Read the rest of this entry »

Bin Yan, Jiahui Guo
United States

This skyscraper project intends to propose and experiment a new folding prototype of informal urbanization in one of the largest and most complicated metropolitan cities in the world—Beijing.

We are inspired from a provocative science fiction novel named “Folding Beijing” by a Chinese writer Ms. Hao Jingfang. This fiction depicts a serious whereas unsurprising future of Beijing, when the city sustain more than ten times of its current population, that different groups of people are segregated spatially and chronologically. In fact, this fiction might not be as surrealistic as it might suggest, according our investigation, there are more than 3.2 million people in Beijing who have to live and work during the night. They, together with their families, contribute to the urban metabolism such as street cleaning, facility maintenance, logistics, etc. They sacrifice their biological clock to minimize the impact of their works for the city’s majority, however, their contribution, as well as their weakness of life are always ignored, they are losing their homes, the shanty neighborhoods, which are gradually encroached and erased under the capital-driven urban sprawl. Read the rest of this entry »