Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Mohammad Pirdavari
Portugal

The construction of a villa is considered a great way to facilitate vacation accommodations for any family, to easily frequent their trips. Site locations for villas are most of the time, a place in the heart of pleasant natural resources, which construction of a villa, would ruin the existing ecosystem. In addition, having a traditional villa will cost a fortune, which is multiplied considering the fact that people want to idealize their villa, as their dream house! Limitations of the construction industry, in terms of land use, and lack of access to distant places, are also insurmountable. These are all just a gist of the reasons why the construction of a villa should be revised meticulously. This design of mine is a state-of-the-art, idea, which is a great way to overcome these challenges and create a new exceptional viewpoint. A self-sufficient, flying unit, creates a totally different living experience for the residents, in which they are free to choose their ideal climatically destination, no difference how high or low, how cold or warm! An ideal accommodation, which does not add up the expenses, because it gets charged via the solar cells of the facade, and also via the connected nest. A brilliant, eco-friendly, idea that tears down mental barriers as well as economic and environmental limitations. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Shuzhan Liu, Siang Duan, Yimin Gao, Jingyi Li, Shiliang Wang, Daxu Wei
China

The design site is located in a Tiankeng in Shaotong City, Yunnan Province, where villagers have lived for generations. According to a legend, the ancestors of the villagers in Tiankeng lived here in order to avoid war. With the development of the times, problems gradually emerged, causing many inconveniences to the local villagers.

Local dilemma
Residents have a low standard of living and lack infrastructures such as education, medical care, and culture.
The industrial system is monotonous, and the industrial system needs to be optimized.
The development of urbanization and the emigration of villagers have caused the traditional village to be on the verge of extinction.
The outlying location and inconvenient transportation restrict economic development. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Hamidreza Esmailnazari, Hosein Mosavi, Amir Hossein Saeedi Majd, Hossein Amery, Hossein Arshadi Soufiani, Ali Jamali, Maryam Baharvandi
Sweden

Isfahan is a city in the middle of the desert in Iran and it is situated on the north side of the Zayandeh River. The city retains much of its history, which has developed between the 9th and 18th centuries. It is famous for its Persian architecture and its history.

For centuries Isfahan city had been an oasis settlement, by dint of its surrounding fertile lands and prosperity. After the 1980s, the demand for water for industrial usage has raised gradually. The creation of large steelworks and other new industries along with the growing population, disable the scarce water resources to be utilized primarily for agriculture and now, the Zayandeh River cannot supply all the agriculture’s land anymore. The farmers in Isfahan have protested against the diversion of water from the Zayandeh River to supply other areas, leaving their farms dry and threatening their livelihoods. The violent crackdown on protests was answered to them by the government in 2021. From another point of view in this historical region, which has extreme weather, architecture ways widely used for finding passive ways to solve relation between humans and nature. These architectural ways are bound with the culture and identity of the local people. Their lifestyle has formed inside different types of shelters to protect them in extreme weather situations. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Kaiyu Chen, Yong Lin, Ziyi Li, Zhipeng Tao
China

Over the past years, the environmental issues due to carbon emissions have been the focus of many countries around the world. The emissions in North America and Europe have been stable, while the developing countries in Asia, South America, and Africa are facing increasing air pollution problems with economic growth and urbanization.

Similar reasons caused the increased carbon concentration in different countries. Rapid urbanization brings a higher demand for electricity and heating, and the CO₂ emissions from electronic appliances/equipment and transportation are the major sources of carbon emission.

In order to address the environmental issue due to greenhouse gas emissions, and to improve our living conditions, different countries are applying various methods to eliminate carbon emissions and improve air quality. The Chinese government is advocating the carbon emission control policy, proposing the strategic goals of “Carbon Peak” in 2030, and “Carbon Neutrality” in 2050. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Xueer Wang
China

The inhabitants of the Marshall Islands are the most direct victims of the two major threats facing humanity-nuclear weapons and climate change. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in, and over the Marshall Islands, expelled hundreds of people from their homes, and buried more than 3.1 million cubic feet of radioactive soil on one of the atolls, covering it with cement-forming what the locals call “The Tomb”. For decades, the residents of Marshall depended on foreign aid to survive.

Nowadays, climate change and sea-level rise not only accelerate the leakage of radioactive materials but also bring new threats to these indigenous people. a self-sufficient community system that provides clean water, food, and adequate infrastructure must be provided to the local residents. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Karan Jain, Vishwal Ram Gowda
India

Meru, it means the abode of gods at the center of the universe, the project brings together the context with those inhabiting it. The goal is to create organic growth within a community by the usage of progressive improvements, sort of like how a frog doesn’t realize its being boiled in water.

Currently in Delhi, among many problems is the incredulous amount of waste that is produced by the city and in tandem with that, its relation and allocation with the slums of Delhi. Among the two the former isn’t being given enough treatment and the latter seems impossible without the displacement of a large population of people. After contemplation one thinks that such a feat is impossible without there being the availability of such a large vacant amount of space. But what one, can do in such a situation is to set up a situation of parallel organic growth, this allows for the infrastructure to creep into an area with such rich culture and history while also allowing the area to creep into the infrastructure allowing for both the former and the latter to develop off of each other, pushing the development of the context at an exponential rate.

To achieve this the context and the people within should be able to feed off of each other, and so the MCD dump yard in Bhalswa new Delhi seems like the perfect site as the dump yard has been accumulating waste for a long time and as such depreciating the value of anything around it, which in turn made it ideal for laborers and slum dwellings to develop. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Chien-Ching Su
Taiwan

Insects, accounting for 80% of animal life on Earth, are the most diverse and largest group on Earth. However, both their diversities and numbers are declining around the globe due to habitat loss, pollution, and climate change. Without effective conservation measures, not only food shortage becomes serious because lots of pollinators disappear, but the whole ecological balance on the planet will break. The main goals of the project are to conserve insects’ diversity and restore their population. With artificial frameworks and the help of bees, the high-rise structure will be built as an insect habitat.

The inspiration for the design comes from a Slovakian Artist, Tomáš Libertíny, who cooperates with a swarm of bees to create many striking sculptures. The most famous beeswax sculpture in his works is the Nefertiti bust, finished by 60,000 bees cooperation. The question is – how does he produce these works “made by bees?” Firstly, he prints a 3D artificial framework of the sculpture, which encourages bees to build their hive above the framework. Then, he spreads some sugar to help worker bees work efficiently. After a while, bees will complete a striking sculpture made with beeswax. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Han-Yu Lai, Wei-Qun Cai, Chun-Yi Yeh
Taiwan

In 2008 the FAO reported that 20% of all cultivated areas, 30% of forests, and 10% of grasslands are degrading. 52% of the land used for agriculture is moderately or severely affected by soil degradation and 12 million hectares of once productive land are lost to desertification per annum. Nearly 1.5 billion people depend directly on degrading land for their livelihoods, most of them in the so-called ‘developing world’. Land degradation leads to food insecurity which can, in turn, lead to conflict, migration, and inevitably, the loss of biodiversity. Less tangible, but no less significant is that the process of degradation not only erodes the land, it also corrodes the spirit of communities watching their homelands turn into a wasteland. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Ahmed Helal
United States

Since the construction of the Equitable Life Assurance Building in 1820, the office tower has become synonymous with white-collar productivity in New York City. In the subsequent 200 years, some 450 million square feet of office space has been constructed in the five boroughs, constituting over 10% of all office space within the United States. It wasn’t until the proliferation of the internet, collaborative communication platforms, and co-working spaces, that the office began to decentralize. Then, in 2020, the Global Coronavirus Pandemic completely disrupted the corporate hierarchy, as White-Collar America transitioned to working from home, it became evident that the workforce could remain productive outside the office. It is now clear that there will never be a full return to pre-Covid workplace normalcy. This paradigm shift has rendered the commercial office tower obsolete. If this typology no longer holds value, then what should we do with the obsolete building stock? To simply demolish it would be wasteful, arrogant, and short-sighted, for two reasons. First, all constructions have inherent value simply in that they exist and were an expenditure of finite resources that can never be replaced. To dispose of them is to erase those resources forever. New York City alone produces over 3 million tons of construction waste annually, only 35% of which is returned to the production stream. Second, it is precisely this outdated building stock that gives New York its identity. The only path forward is adaptive reuse – to transform these antiquated buildings into vibrant and essential structures that serve to alleviate the two fundamental architectural crises in the city: housing and public space. – This proposal is an example of adaptive reuse design, changing landmarked office skyscrapers like the AT&T Building by Philip Johnson, currently known as 550 Madison, to residential spaces that prioritize tenants and the local community, offering an accessible well-rounded live, work, and play lifestyle through the design and programming of homes and public spaces. Read the rest of this entry »

2021 Skyscraper Competition
Editors’ Choice

Daniel Shen, Benjamin van Nostrand
Canada

The global megamachine that connects us operates as a complex network, a global system of flows of goods, financial capital, information, and ideas on how the world is and how it should be. The dominant organizing principle of the megamachine is the endless accumulation of capital, the central logical motor for the aggressive expansion and permanent growth that the machine needs to exist.

The megamachine comprises the most powerful organizations of the world. The 500 largest companies generate half of the global GDP. Their products – cars and medicine, smartphones and machine guns, animal fodder and electricity – are interchangeable means to their real end: the endless multiplication of money. To keep the machine running, once the demand for certain products is satisfied, new demands need to be created.

After a half millennium, the long expansion nears insurmountable limits, the accumulation machine is stuttering. At the same time, rapid unchecked urbanization across the globe has, seemingly overnight, turned the revival of the cities into a new kind of urban crisis of housing and affordability. Read the rest of this entry »