Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Alina Kandyba, Emil Stefansson, Josefin Antus, Karl Östvall
Sweden

Up in the Squair is a re-imagination of the skyscraper as a vertical continuation of urban space; a proposal focused on the experience of the user exploring the dynamics of spaces, derived from elements found in historic city centers.

The context where the skyscraper first arose is recognized by its strict grid plan; wide avenues to fit traffic, not much room for adaptations, nor irregularities and asymmetries. The skyscraper could be seen as a reflection of this context following a grid plan logic but vertically with orthogonal circulation; a common idea of rationally moving from point A to point B unifies building with the site.

When the skyscraper was introduced to Europe it faced a more complex situation. A present history and an architectural dominance exclusive to culture, state, or religion. And as a result, instead of becoming the core of the city, like New York or Tokyo, the skyscrapers of Europe tend to be either erected in districts planned for the matter, like Le Défense in Paris, or in the historic center where old structures are demolished to give space for the skyscraper, like City of London’s financial district. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Lee Jae Uk, Kim Ji Hoo
South Korea

Water shortage
The African government has invested heavily in education, agriculture, and medical facilities for the development of the country, but has not been able to produce clear results. Increasing demand due to rapid urban growth resulted in the overabundance of the water resources system, and poor management of resources, weak long-term investment and research on the environment, and a lack of infrastructure led to many natives’ dependence on relief.

Ironically, the average annual precipitation in Africa results in average annual rainfall of 1,000 to 2,000 mm. Nevertheless, the reason why water is always suffering from a lack of water supply facilities infrastructure to collect and store rainwater. The climate of Africa is divided into dry and rainy seasons. In the rainy season, there is a lot of rain to flood, but this rain is not used and flows into the groundwater.

The minimum amount of water a person needs to survive is 7 liters per day. Urban areas with water facilities can easily be supplied with water, but Africans in rural areas who do not receive a minimum supply of water spend 16 hours a day growing water, and they will never dream of agricultural water. Lack of drinking water and agricultural water worsened their health.

Lack of water and sewage treatment facilities
In Africa, where sewage treatment facilities are not available, people solve feces and urine on the streets and it seeps into the ground.  pathogens are preserved on the ground. One way for Africans to get water is to grow contaminated water from digging. This water also worsens their health.

Sponge
The Sponge is a water circulation collection housing for residents in rural areas who can use groundwater due to discharge and collect rainwater in rainy seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Adam Fernandez
France

For more than 4,500 years, the pyramids have fascinated me. Man-made for the elite of the early dynasties, they were built as a royal tomb. Resurrection machine where the pharaohs made their transition from death to eternal life, this pyramidal shape is also a magical symbol of regeneration linked to the daily rebirth of the sun.

According to recent research, the pyramids were built by free men. The excavations carried out near the pyramids by the group of archaeologists AERA in 2013 have made it possible to reconstruct the life of these Egyptians. It describes a working town located south of the Sphinx. They found evidence of animal husbandry, slaughterhouses, and graveyards there, enough to infer the proper diet and access to medical care for construction workers, Dr. Redding told LiveScience.

The PYRAMIDES project aims to offer an alternative to the architects of the past. That of building new cities based on the same divine laws. Through which the people and the pharaohs would cohabit together.

This city is organized around an oasis. It keeps an ecological reserve in its core where wild flora and fauna share a common shelter protected from the sun. Functioning as a green lung and natural air conditioner, the inhabitants of PYRAMIDES will be able to walk there and enjoy a temperate climate.

In the very heart of the city and the oasis, there is also a place of worship dedicated to prayer where all roads converge. As for the royal tomb, the basements protect the relics and sarcophagus of their pharaoh. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Zhang Zhenpeng, Feng Jialu
China

The Nagorno-Karabakh region in West Asia is generally recognized by the international community as a part of Azerbaijan, but it is controlled by Armenians. Since 1988, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been disputed over the ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia reached an agreement on a comprehensive ceasefire. However, the two countries have been hostile over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. On September 27, 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out into a military conflict. The war caused a large number of casualties on both sides of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Half of the people in the Nagorno-Karabakh region lost their homes. The city was bombed and destroyed. Social security was chaotic. People had to flee to bunkers, dungeons, and churches. They were worried that they would die at any time. A church in Shusha has experienced destruction, the interior of the church is incomplete. Both sides of the war claim sovereignty here. 200 civilians took refuge here at the beginning of the war. During the war, a couple still insisted on holding a wedding in the church.

The church has changed hands several times, sometimes as an Islamic space and sometimes as a Christian space. No matter what kind of space it is, space is meaningless, and its meaning comes from life. People left their lives and plunged into war, forgetting the beauty of life’s common expectations and longings. However, people can pursue the common meaning in the Synonym Tower, whether it is truth, goodness, beauty, or divinity, the authentic form aims to erase all forms. There is no mosque or Christian church here, so the building achieves the ultimate meaning of its generation and construction—carrying all lives and manifesting the public meaning, that is, the meaning of peace. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Liu Yifei, Tian Yu, Wang Hangdi, Zhou Beiyu
China

For the current loss of architectural identity and urban renewal issues, we conceived a future urban renewal system. Based on the extensive use of 3D printing technology in the future, it will be possible to print sophisticated building bodies and equipment using different high-strength materials. The city of the future will become a rapidly reborn diversified life body, and the temporary 3D buildings that can be quickly rebuilt will replace the permanent buildings as the main body. The Printscraper scattered in different areas designed by us is like a mobile operating table in the city, which accurately retrieves, rebuilds, or repairs buildings.

The Printscraper is driven by solar and nuclear energy and transfers within the service radius of the city. During construction, the three auxiliary towers on the side and the cantilever membrane structure spread out to cover the entire construction area, using 3D nozzles for operation. The membrane structure isolates noise and dust, ensuring the daily life of the surrounding blocks to the greatest extent. The demolished building is processed and stored inside as greening soil and reused materials. The lower part of the building is equipped with a viewing platform and a vertical park open to all citizens. People can visit and monitor the progress of the project while the Printscraper stays in the block, or simply treat it as a temporary good place to meet others. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Yao Junji, Liu Yuxi, An Peiyan, Chen Yuxuan, Huang Yunting
China

The development of modern civilization has increasingly detached human beings from their natural attributes. Pollution, the fast pace of life, the unprecedented amount of information, the complexity of social relationships, changes in work and rest patterns, and differences in consumer orientation have all contributed to the gradual increase and worsening of mental illness. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 poses a huge challenge to world health, both physically and psychologically. Researchers found from patient health records that within 14 days to 90 days after the diagnosis of novel coronavirus pneumonia, 18% of patients or seemingly normal individuals were diagnosed with mental health problems. The results of this clinical study indicate that in the next few months or more, due to the global pandemic, it is likely to cause a “tsunami-like” outbreak of mental health problems and psychiatric disorders.

Among multiple mental health problems, dysthymic disorder is characterized by high prevalence, high relapse rate, high disability rate, high suicide rate, and high disease burden, which refers to significant and persistent emotional changes caused by various reasons, including depression, bipolar disorder, etc., mainly manifested as emotional highs or lows, accompanied by corresponding cognitive and behavioral changes. Meanwhile, other psychological problems or diseases are often accompanied by emotional cognitive impairment, emotional loss of control, and other emotional problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Michał Wachura, Kamil Wróbel
Poland

Problem
Currently, there are over 700 million people in the world who are not able to write and read. Most of them are women. Almost three times as many do not have access to a stable education system. Without these basics, people are cut off from information, knowledge, and truth. Without that they become more vulnerable to manipulation, social inequalities, exploitation, objectification, or even slavery.

Solution
We believe that each of the above-mentioned problems can be solved in two ways: on an ad hoc basis – through recovery policies and programs, and in the long term – through raising self-awareness and a sense of global community by providing the necessary knowledge and tools to regions of the world that need support. This bottom-up proposal also helps in tackling such problems as mas migration, climate change, and economic crisis after the pandemic.

Project
The project consists of three stages: the first is the production of specialized research and education units in assembly towers. The second is the transport of units using flying modules with an airship-based foot system to selected places on the globe where the teaching systems do not exist or are at a low level. The third stage is the creation of educational centers that give people access to knowledge, tools, and technologies of the modern world. Giving them the opportunity to level the playing field. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Xinru Yang, Jiang An, Ning Sun, Yunwei Pan, Lifa Lin
China

For most local areas of cities, the content of an urban design is relatively specific. Gerald Crane once pointed out in the book “The Time of Urban Design”: “Urban design is the first level of design that studies the relationship between the main elements in the urban organizational structure. “In urban space design, architecture is the main factor that constitutes and affects urban space. Building form and volume have a direct impact on external space. The quality of individual buildings and group combinations directly affects people’s evaluation of the urban environment. The expansion of building scale and modern transportation development has changed the design concept of traditional architecture. In ancient times, people’s perception of buildings was based on walking or carriage speed (4~6 km/h), and they experienced 3~5 meters high vertical facades on both sides of the street: in modern cities, people’s perception of buildings Based on the driving speed of 30 kilometers per hour, feel the visual area from tens of meters to hundreds of meters on both sides of the street. Besides the emergence of large-scale buildings, super high-rise buildings and super-large comprehensive buildings, the rapid increase in population density, and the expansion of building scale from the past small scale to today’s mega-size, all of these have changed The relationship between man and architecture and the relationship between architecture and city. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Cheung Kat Fu Eric
Hong Kong

In ancient time, gravity and the natural slope of the land allowed aqueducts to channel water from a freshwater source, such as a lake or spring, to a city. Such recognizable bridges constructed using rounded stone arches can be still be seen today traversing European valleys.

To be able to protect the ancient structures, the project Aqua Vitae was added to bring a new life to these ruined monuments in nature. By utilizing the Ronquenfavour Aqueduct in Ventrabren, one of the largest functional stone aqueducts structure in the present. The design approach seeks to adapt to the existing stone structure, to allow frameworks to be erected within the beautiful terrain across the valley. The flow of water divides a series of natural scenarios along with the linear space. a variety of habitats like a waterfall, jungle, garden, or grotto is merged to stimulate a diverse and complex range of visual, acoustic, olfactory, and kinesthetic experiences to visitors. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Linnea Pettersson, Ludvig Sundberg, Carmen Povedano Olleros, Evelina Björndal
Spain, Sweden

One of the most urgent environmental issues today is the degradation of land, which is happening at an alarming rate. Around 25% of our total land area has already been degraded, and scientists predict that with 24 billion tons of fertile soil lost every year due to intensive industrial farming, 95% of Earth’s land will be degraded by 2050.

The importance of the Earth’s soil lies in its ability to store carbon and nitrous oxide, as well as hosting complex and diverse ecosystems containing thousands of microorganisms. Out of these organisms, more than a fifth are different types of fungi, which play a crucial part in the ecosystem. The root system of fungi, called mycelium, transforms organic waste into nutrients, binds carbon to the soil, and binds the soil together, making it resilient to heavy rain and floods. Mycelium is therefore the starting point of a long chain of processes that ultimately provides us with food, nutrition, and a healthy planet overall.

However, the destruction of this chain of events due to modern agriculture is resulting in soil degradation, making it poor in quality and ultimately infertile. With a growing population and an increasing demand for food, the Earth’s soil is bound to be destroyed by industrial agriculture unless something is done. Read the rest of this entry »