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 »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Lu Wang, Shuangjiang He, Ning He, Youjia Lv, Limin Wang
China

Due to the long-term global warming and “polar amplification effect”, the ice sheet formed naturally during the Arctic glacial period is much smaller than that reduced during the melting period, and the Arctic sea ice area has decreased by 95% in the past 40 years. Scientists predict that by 2040, there will be little ice in the Arctic Ocean in the summer. Sea ice is an important habitat, migration channel, and breeding place for polar animals, and plays a key role in regulating global climate.

Therefore, we propose a low-energy ice-making method: by reducing the salt content of seawater to make it easier for seawater to freeze naturally, using the method of “freezing a huge piece of ice layer by layer” to accelerate the freezing. When we use seawater, we also use pressure difference to make seawater enter the building naturally, so the whole ice-making process almost consumes no energy. In order to make it easier for the ice to form a complete ice surface, we design the ice cube as a regular hexagon. A regular hexagon is not only easy to assemble but also not easy to disperse. When a piece of ice forms, it is put on the sea and pushed to the shore of the ice sheet by an underwater UAV. Whether it is to make desalinated seawater freeze naturally or to transport seawater through pressure difference, it is our attempt to low energy consumption “environmental protection” building. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Daniel Hambly
United Kingdom

The biorefinery sits atop an old street roundabout, which is directly on the border between the London boroughs of Hackney and Islington. The site was chosen as it was plagued by multiple social and ecological issues that an elegant architectural solution could begin to solve.

Firstly, it is one of the most polluted areas in Hackney, with levels of n02 reaching 60 micrograms per cubic meter, exceeding the safe 40 microgram level. Similarly, the roundabout houses an old street tube station which is a well-frequented stop on the northern line, however, due to the busy nature of the roundabout above, permeability and access to the station remain poor. Finally, the borough of Hackney has pledged to reach net-zero emissions across all its functions by 2040 and plans to follow a ‘high tech’ approach to doing so, however little progress has currently been achieved.

These factors provide the opportunity to create a meaningful and beautiful piece of architecture that uses sustainable technologies to produce clean energy and cleaner air while providing additional housing and office space to the surrounding fabric. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention 
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Yinan Qin, Bo Wei, Jingting Yan, Chao Xie
China

Since ancient times, humans have coexisted with viruses and plagues which—from the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century to the raging coronavirus in 2019—threatens humankind’s survival. The relationship between humans and viruses implies and gives birth to a new mode of production and lifestyle. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has made people pay more attention to public hygiene and laid more stress on the need for isolation space than ever.

Based on the premise of the normalization of pandemics, the design features a new mode of human residence under extreme conditions where infectious diseases break out at any time in the future. It’s a fully enclosed three-part modular building. The lower part is a quarantine area for those who contract a virus; the middle part is a virus monitoring area for those who are in an unknown health status, which also serves as a buffer zone for people’s commuting and activities; the upper part is a space of residential units with absolute safety. A vertical structure connects the three parts with a magnetic levitation device, ensuring their functioning and mobility among them in the vertical direction. All people’s traffic and connections go through the health monitoring area in the middle of the building. This buffer zone is a “window of community” fully controllable under extreme conditions. Its height changes according to the number of healthy people, reducing the spread of the virus. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2021 Skyscraper Competition

Dian Rui, Shuangyu Teng, Yucheng Feng
China

Problems of the Cliff Village
Cliff Village is located in Sichuan Province, China. It is an isolated ‘island’ in the mountains which is 800m above the ground deep. Hundreds of years ago, the ancestors of the village moved here to escape the war. The local villagers live a self-sufficient life. The only rattan ladder is important transportation for them to communicate with the outside world. Although the steel ladder has been rebuilt in Cliff Village, the poverty problem has become prominent due to inconvenient transportation. Thus, we hope to build a vertical traffic tower to solve the problem of inconvenient traffic in Cliff Village At the same time, we hope to increase industrial possibilities in the building to solve the poverty problem of villagers. Read the rest of this entry »