Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Luca D’Amico, Luca Tesio
Italy

Globalization has transformed a considerable amount of city dwellers into modern nomads – people that settle for a few months or years in different cities around the world.

The Containers Skyscraper is an idea to provide nomad housing to this specific type of urban dweller. It consists of an exoskeleton where regular shipping containers transformed into apartment units plug-in. The main structure provides basic infrastructure as well as recreational areas while the habitable units can be transported by ship, truck, and train to almost every large city worldwide providing a sense of “home” to these modern urban nomads.

The structures will consist of a dense mesh of steel beams. Every 100 feet there will be platforms that, in addition of providing rigidity to the structure, they will create a micro-city inside the skyscraper -an indoor /outdoor space used for recreational and social activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Luis Longhi, Christian Bottger, Carla Tamariz
Peru

The city of Lima, capital of Peru, with a population of 10 million people, is an illustrative example of a rapidly-growing unplanned metropolis. Founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, on January 18, 1535, La Ciudad de los Reyes -“The City of Kings”- became the capital and most important city of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Strongly influenced by European, Andean, Arab, African, and Asian heritages, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences.

Lack of a proper transportation system and job opportunities had forced its inhabitants to develop a “smart and creative” way of living which had helped the city to stay away from the energy crisis that is affecting many cities worldwide. This project is an attempt to prevent the city to follow the negative models developed in post-modern metropolises around the world.

The site is the actual city of Lima with its urban fabric extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Andes where water treatment plants will be located to transform salt water into potable water. “Transitional places” (selected parts of the existing urban fabric to remain as part of the city), “agricultural areas” and “water reservoirs” are the main components of the 75 proposed skyscrapers. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Eric Gangaye, Frédéric Velaye Andy, Alvin Pakeeroo, Yann Terrer, Thomas Liaigre
France

Montpellier is one of the largest cities in France and the fastest growing one. Located in the southern part of the country and with access to the Mediterranean Sea it has been a strategic urban settlement since medieval times.

The Tree Skyscraper is a proposal to use a vertical structure to link several horizontal isolated neighborhoods of the city. Five main branches connect to Montepellier’s urban nodes and serve as circulation pathways between the city and the new development. The building is a mixed-use skyscraper focused on sustainability with solar panels, wind turbines, water collection systems, and hanging gardens at different levels. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Zsuzsanna Kiss-Gal, Gergely Kiss-Gal, Margo Petro, Peter Debreczeni
Hungary

By the end of 2011 more than 50% of the world’s population will live in cities and it is estimated that by 2050 more than 70% will do. One of the major problems that we are facing is that while cities are expanding, farmlands are shrinking because its workers are migrating to urban areas.

The RuralScraper is a possible solution to this problem by creating vertical farmlands within the cities. This new structures will also provide housing and entertainment to the farmers and will serve as market to the community while food transportation costs and pollution will be eliminated. The project proposes innovative farmland attached to the facades of the structure while the interior will serve as housing and marketplace. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Nick Ochoa, Sabrina Brenner, Michael Krause
United States

Flexible-Modular (FLEXmod) puts the power of form and program into the hands of the occupant. A lightweight mutable structure can be sculpted to desired shape, function, and size. With the ability to change from iteration to iteration with ease, architecture becomes the symbol of the owner. The FLEXmod system can be utilized universally as either individual units or combined with additional units to create spaces and structures that span infinity.

In the instance depicted by this project, the need for a residential community has arisen. FLEXmod units comprised together form the superstructure for residential tower like compositions. Additional FLEXmod units dedicated to housing and support spaces plug into the superstructure. A complex form of private spaces integrated into various public spaces feeds the notion of a unified community.

As a model for a movement representational of sustainability, units are only added as necessary. Rather than creating a building that is designed for a set of criteria, the building becomes designed by the needs of the inhabitants. If a decreased need for program occurs, units are simply removed and transported to other sites or stored efficiently. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Julia-Elise Hoins, Arnd-Benedikt Willert-Klasing, David Blezinger, Nikolaus Türk
Germany

As a growing metropolis Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city. Although there is a strong demand for housing, new developments cannot be higher than the medieval churches’ towers. Law protects the traditional skyline and a new neighborhood named HafenCity is the only place where skyscrapers are allowed.

This project consists of a mixed-use towers complex in HafenCity with a small footprint that allows the public to move freely and enjoy the ground plan amenities. Since the building is positioned between two major freeways entering the city, the geometry of the building isolates the program from the traffic noise – at the bottom the shorter façades are twisted to the outside while the larger ones open up to the center. The façade responds to the environment by changing its appearance through light and reflections -it dissolves in the sky while stating its presence with shiny gold gradients.

For this area of HafenCity, the master plan developed by the city of Hamburg, requires a mixed-use program of hotel, offices, and housing. It should alsoinclude cultural and public needs which in this project are located in the middle part, where the three towers merge and create a plaza with several levels in the sky. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Michael Leef, Tahel Shaar
Israel

This project proposes an innovative spatial integration between nature, agriculture, and urbanization – an analysis of Jerusalem’s future development. In Jerusalem, land is a valuable and scarce resource, it is a city that has nowhere to expand; geo-political reasons prevent the city from expanding to the north, east, and south, while ecological reasons prevent the city from expanding to the west, therefore, Jerusalem can only expand internally.

The Agro-Housing Towers are part of our urban masterplan – a multi-use complex with commercial, public, and cultural spaces on the street level and agricultural housing and agro-public spaces above. It is a new way of perceiving the urban fabric by creating a structural network of built space with productive and natural open spaces. The towers have a continuous system of agricultural fields on the southern façade – designed according to the annual sun movement to allow agriculture to exist vertically in the maximum number of levels. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Galleria Cheonan responds to the current retail climate in Asia, where department stores also operate as social and semi-cultural meeting places. Because of this, the quality of the public spaces within the building was treated as an integral aspect of the design.” – Ben van Berkel

UNStudio’s Galleria Centercity Department Store in the Korean city of Cheonan reclaims the social and cultural space within the private, commercial large scale department store.

Rather than being the outcome of a prescriptive, standard-critical approach, the design of the Galleria Centercity is based on observations of current behavioural tendencies in large commercial spaces. Particularly in South East Asia, department stores serve a highly social function; people meet, gather, eat, drink and both shop and window shop in these venues. The department store is no longer solely a commercial space, it now offers the architect the opportunity to build upon and expand the social and cultural experience of the visitor. If today we are seeing the museum as a supermarket, then we are also now seeing the department store as a museum. Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to design sustainable new housing prototypes for Haiti, architect Laurent Saint-Val unveiled a designed inspired by the traditional art of basketry by weaving natural plant fibres, including bamboo,  from the local habitat into a cocoon-shape structure.

Saint-Val compares the residential structure to the carving of a totem pole, noting the sacred correlation and explaining: “It’s an architecture that segments space and which translates well the transient character of these habitats.”

Wolf D. Prix / COOP HIMMELB(L)AU presents the new ‘Open Parliament of Albania’ in Tirana which incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The building, located on a site area with approximately 28,000 m², is going to be the first project in Albania for the Viennese headquartered studio.

“Our design for the new Parliament in Tirana, Albania, stands for the transparency of democracy”, according to Wolf D. Prix, Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

Architectural Concept

As the future political center of the Albanian Republic, the Open Parliament of Albania creates an outstanding architectural landmark in one of the main parts of Tirana’s urban fabric. Situated along the compositional axis of the city, it is located in vicinity to the major governmental institutions. The design for the Open Parliament of Albania relies on three main ideas:

• To provide a strong urban statement in this exposed part of Tirana’s urban fabric;

• To assemble the different functions in one building ensemble that is compact enough to create a public forum and a park on the southern part of the site;

• To create a unique building for the most important public institution of the Albanian Republic with a contemporary architectural approach shaped to optimize active and passive energy use.

The design incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The simultaneity of competing political concepts within a democratic society is translated into the design concept: Different building elements are not opposed, but coexist in one building ensemble with a contemporary aesthetic that allows visualizing new functions and meanings. Read the rest of this entry »