Honorable Mention
2023 Skyscraper Competition
Yuxin Meng, Xiang Li, HaoYi Cui, Wenxi Yu, YiJing Zhang, Weilin Xin, ZiJian Liu
China
Fiji is a tourist-driven island nation in the heart of the South Pacific. Due to tropical cyclones and other natural disasters, Fiji has a shrinking land area where people suffer from inundation, food shortages, employment difficulties, and other problems. “Origami-Scraper”, a place to shelter from tropical cyclones, supply employment, conduct meteorological observation, and even be equipped with habitats for birds, will appear on the sea of Fiji. Under normal circumstances, it will be flat for agriculture and fishery development. Once tropical cyclones appear, it will fold itself for protecting people, birds, and ships from them.
When it comes to the reasons why we chose to shelter from tropical cyclones as our design direction, we noticed that hurricane Ian in 2022 hit Florida causing significant economic losses. Actually, many coastal regions are attacked by hurricanes, typhoons, or cyclones and lose a lot of human, material, and financial resources. Especially small islands located in the South Pacific are hit by tropical cyclones almost every year.
But it doesn’t mean being a monotonous project, we gave this idea more functionality. According to Fiji’s popularity in tourism, we chose to build it for Fiji. Fiji is an island nation of approximately 7, 100 square miles in the South Pacific, northeast of New Zealand, and east of Australia, which is affected by severe natural hazards every year. Fiji’s economy is relatively fragile, and its main income comes from tourism. It was hit severely by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which directly led to a rise in unemployment. In addition, Fiji’s net migration rate in the past 50 years has been mostly negative because of rising sea levels and political instability. Read the rest of this entry »