3rd Place
2007 Skyscraper Competition

José Muñoz-Villers
Mexico

Third Place

Articulating the contemporary European city
“Although it owes much to its heritage in the American skyscraper, the contemporary “Euroscraper” is in need of a new expression, one that provides distance from the modernist orthodoxy of the 20th Century and is a critical response to the ornate and delirious notions of the 21st Century tall building that now proliferate in cities such as Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. The European urban dilemma is that while rightfully holding onto the notion that cultural difference will continue to prevail throughout the European urban landscape, a new economic imperative must somehow become evident and explicit on the global stage.” Hani Rashid

Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Eduardo McIntosh
United Kingdom

Special Mention

Alternatives to vertical circulation strategies within high-rises
The phenomenon of the “high-rise” can be read as a result of either high concentration of population or as a symbol of power and wealth. In any case, if we put structural issues out of the equation it is clear that the key element that enabled the birth of the skyscraper was the invention of the elevator. Therefore, it is ironic that the elevator is precisely what has totally limited the evolution of high-rise buildings in terms of programmatic and formal alternatives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Anna Rita Emili
Italy

Special Mention

Sentina is an abandoned and degraded place situated in Italy’s west coast. The space dimension of this almost uncontaminated landscape needs a new construction that takes into consideration history and nature. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Eldine Heep, Gerhild Orthacker, Judith Schafelner, Elle Przybyla
Austria

Special Mention

Contemporary urban scenarios
The contemporary urban landscape, with its overlay of extensive freeway systems and infrastructures for mobility, can be viewed as an expanse of built form and its spatial residuum. These territories of voids are not planned in so much as they are generated by the changing morphology of the urban grid. Rather than resist or ‘correct’ these entropic tendencies that occur in the horizontal plane, the project seeks to embody them in a vertical, architectural scenario. As an urban model, the multi-functional high rise, with its mix of commercial, office, and residential programs, has the potential to dynamically engage in the spatial complexities that characterize the contemporary urban grid. By moving away from the notion of the fixed skyscraper, a functionally stratified structure that compartmentalizes program into predictable discrete zones, the proposal presents a systematic methodology for programmatic hybridization.

Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Xavier Lagurgue, Günther Domenig
France

Special Mention

While the first skyscraper projects emerge on the circular Parisian highway, with the aim to densify the agglomeration and preserve the historical center, we propose to set up a network of towers which we call biotopes. The smallest ones are higher than the Eiffel Tower. It’s a “building provocation”, or as the artist Tatiana Trouvé would say, “a paradoxical injunction in which different types of urban organization, although incompatible at the first sight, are superposed”. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Su Hou Chen, Melinda Sanes, Neil Cook
United States

Special Mention

Undeveloped land is scarcely available in Hong Kong, the densest urban area in the world. In the Western, Central and Wan Chai districts, this has historically led to the in-fill of Victoria Harbor and the creation of an artificial shoreline. This continued way of development replaces harbor with hardscape, further compounding the negative ecological consequences of unintelligent waterfront development, namely, added water pollution, increased impervious surface area, and reduced light exposure to the channel bottom. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Ming Tang, Dihua Yang
United States

Special Mention

Inspired by the Lego blocks, the strategy of Geno-Matrix is to do as much pre-fabrication as possible, under controlled factory conditions. Within a modular building system, large quantity of cubic units are fabricated and assembled into a lattice system. These units can be “pulled”, “pushed” or “combined” in the lattice grid along the axis and form infinite typological features. The characteristic of the skyscraper heavily relies on these units’ location and the internal logic between them. The skyscraper is formed by the same building “blocks” that takes on an organization imposed by the social, economic, and culture requirements of the site. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Dominiki Dadatsi, Fountoulaki Elrini, Pavlidou Eleni
Greece

Special Mention

This tower is a case study of a larger housing proposal situated in East London that serves as an example of adaptive architecture. Based on ecological systems, the team investigates how an urban development can be explored as a simulation model of natural growth that negotiates and adapts to the existing urban fabric. Borrowing rules and functions from the natural world, such as growth and phyllotaxis, the project is an investigation of parametric development adapting to different urban needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skyscraper Competition

Sebastien Chauvel
France

Special Mention

Thinking about the city in two dimensions means a horizontal spreading of the urban mass, an estrangement of the functions and a loss of social cohesion. The urban scattering creates a waste of energy, space, and resources. The compact urban planning in three dimensions, such as the skyscraper, offers a solution to these problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2007 Skysrcaper Competition

Raymond Bourraine
United States

Special Mention

The Ritual Towers are multi-purpose structures, challenging wood architecture to produce an iconic and green project. Designed to aid small towns in poverty, the towers are located in the Pentecost Islands.The design generates power and pumps fresh usable water, at the same time it can be used for the Naghol leaping rituals. The iconic shape comes from the idea of energy in the form of a flame. The design is composed by two towers. The first tower is the wind tower, with turbines that generate energy. The second tower is the water tower and reservoir. Read the rest of this entry »