Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Julien Bourgeois, Olivier Colliez, Savinien de Pizzol, Cédric Dounval, Romain Grouselle
France

Energy is one of the major concerns of our current society. Today sustainable architecture seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by enhancing efficiency and moderation in the use of materials. Noise is part of our urban environment and our everyday life and it is one of the most prevalent pollution form in cities, but it is also an important source of energy not valued yet.

The soundscraper takes advantage of city noise pollution by capturing airborne sound and converting it into usable energy. One of the most abundant energy sources is ambient motion. Vibrations can provide plentiful energy, and can be transferred through many media, making this form of kinetic energy very useful.

The Soundscraper is located next to main transport infrastructures, mostly outside city centers where noise pollution is at it maximum. Motorway junction, railway hub represent no man’s land in the urban territory and areas of greatest efficiency to produce energy . Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Mingxuan Dong, Yuchen Xiang, Aiwen Xie, Xu Han
China

As technological innovative and higher latest skyscrapers can be, they still need to rely on the support to the ground. So a higher heights usually means more unstableness as well as weaker capacity to resist disasters.

The project proposes a mega hex grid that evolves around the earth circumference at a stratosphere heigh, the principle that support this hypothesis is that it seem to be that in a building the larger the span is, the scale and the unstableness will proportionally increase. But if the span is large enough within the scale of the earth, the unstableness brought by the size decreases inversely. In this case the network of buildings and bridges connected to each other, covering the entire circumference of the earth, will no longer need structural ground support and can be suspended in the air by the effect of the earth gravity. The elevated bridges and buildings that relate the grid can reach any height with out worrying about overturning, earth-quakes, floods and any other natural disasters.

The earth needs to find a environmental balance. As human over-used the resources the earth is being heavily damaged, eventually approaching to a point in which the earth will be unsuitable for human living. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Hao Tian, Huang Haiyang, Shi Jianwei
China

The outbreak of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, since 1750, unavoidably brought severe environmental pollution. The most explicit consequence is the Acid Deposition caused by waste of large-scale industrial production.

Produced by the fossil fuel used in abundance, as well as the heavy traffic and industrial production, the SO2&NOx drives the PH value of atmosphere under 5.6. Gradually precipitating to the surface of the earth, these acidic materials have caused great harm to plant, architecture and human beings.

The project aim to use a gentle way to manage Acid Deposition and eventually turn pollutants into available resources (reclaimed water & chemical fertilizer) for the region of Chongqing.

The project is set to be 200-300m high where acidic pollutants gather. The aerocyst filled up with H2 at the top of the building provides buoyancy to it. The porous membrane attached to the air bags can absorb the acidic materials, like acid fog, collect and put them into core purifier where neutralization takes place with alkaline substance produced by nitrogen-fixing microorganism via biological action, which is stored in the purifier center. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Park Sung-Hee, Na Hye Yeon
South Korea

The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the north-east Pacific Ocean has been increased a hundred times over the past 40 years accumulating and forming what we know as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a great hazard to the earth ecosystems balance.

Studies estimate that the amount of plastic floating on the Pacific Ocean is twice the size of the US State of Texas.

Kinetic Islands address this problem and propose a solution for disposal huge-amount of plastic and garbage patches in North-east Pacific Ocean, and take advantage of them as construction elements for a futuristic floating city.

The project propose a modular study on floating elements. Each module or element works as a flotation device, using 3 floats, that allow it to move trough the pacific ocean currents. Each module will recollect as much garbage as it is founding trough his path. Then when its full it will move to meet the nearest units to form a garbage chain. By the time many chains floating in Pacific Ocean, meet each other, they can be assembled like a Spiral Shape formed by ocean currents and centralized like a big island. That island can be covered by soil in order to have c a strongly solid founding that allow to develop farming crops. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Ekkaphon Puekpaiboon
Thailand

Mankind has always face the threat of extinction, from an extreme natural disaster.

“Zero” is a radical skyscraper, designed to ensure mankind’s survival after global devastation. Like an emergency toolbox, it will be the starting point to the reestablish social order through digital communication and information exchange.

“Zero” will provide the crucial elements to support life and to rebuild our existence, even if we had to start from zero. The key element to ensure that humanity is not lost is information. We live in the digital age. Communication and knowledge It is our most important resources today.

“Zero” is dedicated to gathering information; an online data vault to make sure human knowledge is not lost. Government, institutes and organization around the globe are able to upload information to “Zero” data vault. Anything considered important from architectural construction, agricultural planning, scientific records, language translation, or even family photos can be stored within this data vaults. If a “Zero” is destroyed, the data will not be lost as they are duplicated and shared around the world among other “Zero” units. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Michael Charters
United States

“Big Wood” is a prototype on mass timber construction that offers the possibility to build more responsibly while actively sequestering pollutants from our cities. Sited in Chicago; “Big Wood” aims to write a new chapter in high-rise construction.

Steel and concrete structural systems have been the primary materials of choice in skyscrapers construction over the years. Unfortunately, these materials have a heigh energy production and recycle costs considering the entire life of a structure.

Understanding that the construction industry accounts for 39% of man-made carbon emissions, it’s imperative that we develop more intelligent and less environmentally destructive strategies for construction. Recent studies had proved the success of 20-30 story mass timber structures with the potential to go higher using hybrid systems.

“Big Wood” is a mixed-use university complex sited in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood. The structure consists of a mass timber system utilizing lumber grown and manufactured on a brown-field site in South Chicago.

Known as “South Works”, the tree farm site was once home of a steel mill, where raw materials were brought in via barge on Lake Michigan. A majority of the steel used to build Chicago’s famous towers (including Willis and John Hancock) came through the South Works steel mill. Implementing a tree farm will extract toxins from the soil as well as carbon dioxide from Chicago’s air. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Liangpeng Chen, Yating Chen, Lida Huang, Gaoyan Wu, Lin Yuan
China

The abandoned Shenfu Dongsheng coalfield, was China’s largest coal-producing base goaf. The goaf not only influenced the local soil and land, but also wasted the terrestrial heat at a large scale whit a lot of consequences such as collapse,debris flow and soil erosion, destruction of building and cropland, atmosphere pollution etc.

The project proposes to reuse the goaf and part of the pipelines on the working platforms. The vertical pipelines will work as the chief transportation system. The main volumes are deposited in the site.

Applying principles used in miner, the horizontal skyscraper will use the existing vertical miner elevator systems as a way of transportation. The housing and habitable space will be underground , supported by vertical tube that will bring fresh air in the water will be taken from the underground soil trough advanced and explorative techniques and will be heated by geothermal processes. The terrestrial heat is used to cultivate the saplings and then the grown trees are replanted on the mountains to renovate the worn-out land. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2013 Skyscraper Competition

Chen Yao, Xiao Yunfeng, Li Xiaodi, Xie Rui, Yin Xiaoxiang
China

The rising of sea level is one of the most dramatic crisis that modern cities face in the last decades. It is estimated that sea level will rise of more than 500mm by the end of this century. At that time, 600 million people will lose their homeland with 3000 cities sinking into the water. Since 2/3 of the world’s population is settled in the coastal areas.

The Promised Land is conceived as “humans” final homeland, a self-sustainable city on submerged places, shape as massive cross rising over the water level. The building works as a modular self assembly system. Prefabricated girders and columns made of reinforced concrete are fixed on the ground as foundation, then prefabricated floors are placed in order to sustain the different programatic modules.

By using a modular assembly system, the skyscraper is able to be built constantly, making it possible to develop upper programs continually. Read the rest of this entry »