Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Yassin Nour Al-tubor, Fawzi Bata, Boran Al-Amro, Yazeed Balqar
Jordan

The city of Detroit has one of the highest crime rates in the U.S, having said that, the U.S.A has 5% of the world’s prisoner population. With people abandoning Detroit after once being an economic hub in the past. The economy of Detroit is crumbling.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the average annual cost of incarceration in Federal prisons in 2010 was $28,284 per inmate. With inmates being seen as an economic burden to taxpayers, it is logical to rethink incarceration methods in the U.S.A. This is where the idea of production comes into play. The aim is to allow the inmates to serve their jail time while still being a labour force in the economy.

The city of Detroit is going under change, regarding zoning of areas and spaces. With many areas being abandoned, it is useful to think about architecture that is flexible according to volatile economic needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Chunyang Li, Shuai Yang, Zhenhang Zhao, Ruize Xiao, Yuequn Wang
China

The earth is full of volcanoes, and the occasional eruption of volcanoes has caused a lot of trouble, and has been accompanied by a lot of energy release. Solving the problem of volcanic eruption and using the energy of volcanoes is the concept of our design. Volcanic eruption is due to the magma underneath the pressure is too large, we through unceasingly magma Wells out of the magma of energy, so, in the magma energy will never reach the state of the eruption.

Obtaining energy through a magma well requires overcoming the following four points. First of all, the depth of the magma well needs to reach five kilometers, which requires a lot of technology. Second, in the process of obtaining energy, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and other gases will be emitted, so the building USES green plants such as algae to absorb carbon dioxide and other gases. The third point, the conservation of energy, is the way the building USES energy blocks to solve more volcanic eruptions.

In order to deal with the problem of gas pressure balance and building flight, a special biofilm structure was designed. The air inside and outside can be exchanged through biofilms. It can also be inflated in the middle of the biofilm, and when all the membrane structures are filled with gas, it provides the power to fly the building.

The demand for nature is not unlimited, and when we collect a certain amount of volcanic energy, we fly down a volcano that needs to be governed. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Huy Bui, Howard Mack
United States

In 2017, the Hong Kong tops the world chart with 7687 high-risers and 303 skyscrapers. The city’s verticality is a direct result of its extreme density and land scarcity. According to Civic Exchange the average open space available for each Hongkonger is the size of a coffin or a toilet cubicle (8 sq. ft.) This lack of space is considered to have damaging effects on generations of Hong Kong. In a city of 7 million people, many Hongkongers are being ensconced in tiny enclosed spaces, suspended hundreds of feet above the social realm with nowhere to unwind, express, relax and interact with their community.

How can we provide open space to people in a city that has already been so dense and filled up with skyscrapers? My proposal is an elevated, mega-cluster of open spaces that attempts to span the entire area of the densest neighborhood in Hong Kong – Mong Kok. The aim of this project is to provide Hongkongers in Mong Kok with a network of public open spaces that are highly accessible and multi-functional to compensate for the city’s severe lack of land and cramped living condition.

Hover above the city, the new structure will be supported by the city’s own skyscrapers and high-risers. The core of these buildings will be extended up to serve as structural columns for the new mega-structure. Together with the core, vertical circulation will also be extended up, allowing occupants from these buildings to have direct access to the space without leaving their apartments. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Baraa Kawasmi, Amal Tatfi
Jordan

Natural resources varies from one place to another, among these is natural stone (rock) used mainly in construction and buildings.  A high percentage of these quarries are spreading randomly in the City of Amman / Jordan in an unstructured manner.  They have become an environmental threat to the city’s urban fabric, which requires to find a solution for this problem. The project will be designed to rehabilitate an old quarry in Amman, by transforming it into a traditional and cultural Mixed-use Skyscraper on the quarry’s site, by transfer this site into an eco-bridge in order to reconnect the parts of the city separated by these quarries.

Introduction
As soon as the quarries are drained, they usually become deserted and neglected.

Abandoned Quarries Impact:

1. Environmental pollution.
2. Influencing the biodiversity.
3. Influencing the shape of the land  .
4. Separating the urban fabric of the city.

Although quarrying is considered to be an unfavorable industry, its importance is unquestionable. We have to deal with these neglected quarries by creating a building or an activity that serves both local community and environment.

Concept of Design
Amman appears as a ‘modern’ urban area, albeit one that also shows distinct traditional characteristics at the local or micro-level. The social transformation of the city over the last years has been no less spectacular.

Therefore, our design represents a noticeable combination of these two aspects of Amman, in the composition, units, materials and community presence. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Alexander Nikolas Walzer
Austria

As the world population grows and cities usually expand into the surrounding areas, or because of static infrastructure form way too high urban densities, the question arises what alternatives we have at the latest after exhaustion of land reserves. The proposed project entitled “E Mare Libertas” (Latin, for Freedom from the Sea) provides a scenario of a vertically packed settlement in the port of Singapore, a state that has already exploited 92% of its building land and that is forced to create new land artificially.

The creation of open spaces on the water, the idea of energetic self-sufficiency, a modular construction system and the inclusion of privacy represent design challenges that are playing extremely with the tension between density and freedom.

With this work, the author tries to point out the problem of our demographic future on an urban scale and to embed it in a proposal for the development of the remaining 70% of the world surface.

“E Mare Libertas” is the national motto and the name of the national anthem of the Micronation Sealand in the North Sea, on a former naval fort off the coast of Great Britain. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Dong Jingzhe , Li Boyu , Zhang Zihan , Sun Zhe , Wu Yilun , Yu Yang , Zhang Haohao
China

Several years after World War III, a global war breaks out between countries in the world to fight for exhausting petroleum resource. Use of large amount of nuclear weapons in late war resulted in destruction of whole ecological environment in the earth. Most particles produced by nuclear explosion has size less than 1 micron floating in the air for tens of years to severely influence environmental temperature of the earth, so a scene like biter cold winter will appear on the earth – “nuclear winter”.

Damaged by nuclear weapon, the ecological circle is destructed and people cannot live on the earth’s surface, so we propose the “central survival of people” boldly. Facing long time span damage caused by nuclear pollution, people need to live underground temporarily and restore ground environment, meanwhile, people need to contact outer space closely to explore new planets suitable for people to live.

Individual lifesaving building, with most volume underground, has spiral lift device according to restoration condition of ground, providing living environment isolating nuclear pollution size a small city for survivors, with top space mainly used for takeoff and landing of Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), green plant and space purification. UAV carries chemicals to purify and reclaim soil and sow seed, giving the earth life while purifying environment. Water in the air is collected through top condensing tube and stored in storage device, they are transported through pipe to be used for green plant and people’s life. Lower film structure turn CO2 to O2 while purifying dust and air. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

QiLong Wu, WuHong Fang, HuiFang Duan, Chenhui Bao
China

In Buddhist culture, there is a saying called “reincarnation” which believes that the death of life is actually a fresh new start. It is not only a renewal of life and the eternity of spirit, but also a new starting point of a legend.

Every mortal dies eventually. Cemetery is often considered as the place where the deceased rest after their life comes to an end, however, the end of life does not mean virtually meaningless sleep underground. It is not only the place where the living remember the deceased, but also a station where the latter can reincarnate and continue to give back to nature and the living with a different form of life.

Based on the foregoing, in this case we put forward the idea of using the cremains of the dead as the nutrients for seed germination to symbolize the reincarnation of life by the process of seed germinating and growing, whilst minor parts of the plant, through sampling, processing and design, can also become a present for the living who would feel that the deceased are still around them.

In terms of architectural design, if the function of cemetery is simply vertical overlaid, the architecture created can only be a cold tombstone. What we hope is that the architecture could become a bridge between the living and the dead, which carries the affection of the living and allows the life value of the dead to continue and make spiritual dialog between the two possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

BoSheng Liu, Jon Rankin, Bryan Daily
United States

By 2300 the Arctic north will no longer be a sequestered, seemingly uninhabitable, frontier – with a projected annually averaged temperature increase of 15 degrees Fahrenheit by 2099 (GlobalChange) – as two-thirds of the world will become uninhabitable. (CleanTechnica) (IPCC) (NCA) In recent years – due to climate change and rapid warming of the polls leading to large ice melt – the Northwest Passage has become navigable during the warmer months. In conjunction with this occurrence the permafrost has begun to thaw. This has lead to an array of corporate interest in the region – ranging from oil, mineral, shipping, and tourist entities, as well as, nations attempting to pioneer the circumpolar territory. (ENR) Now the land and sea of the Arctic north is one of the most contentious geo-political campaigns of our time that will inexorably impact the world in coming centuries – in some ways malignant and in others benevolent. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Keon Hee Lee, Dong Hyun Kim, Elicia Jiwoo Eom
Australia, South Korea

What do we miss from our current city? Large metropolitan areas such as Manhattan, Hong Kong and Tokyo have a dynamic culture and environment which attracts and sustains a lot of people. These areas are international hubs for commerce and the government. As the number of cities and urban population grow, not only does the demographic change but also its social, economic and psychological shape alters constituting demographics changes. Despite big cities having its fascinating sides, it brings with it significant disadvantages caused by the demographic changes and urbanization. It reduces the available green space and creates higher greenhouse gas emission and also affects mental health through the influence of increased stressors and factors such as overcrowding, pollution, high levels of violence, less ‘human fitting environment’ and lack of social support etc.

According to ARCADIS Consultancy, there are 3 main benchmarks in being a sustainable city. Quality of life, Green factors and Economic health. Here is where the problems rises. Many of those metropolitan areas have such a high ratings on the latest indicators yet the quality of life(people) ratings is very low. City planning, urbanization, advanced technologies all made the city greater however, it seems to have less consideration in ‘us’. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Jinzi Wei, Yiliang Shao
China

Background
Since the rapid evolvement of 3D-printing technology, inevitably this technology will take a significant role in industrial projections. In a near future, as lifestyle evolves, new urban spaces, and therefore, city structures would be required. This new mode of production system will greatly shorten the distance between consumer and manufacturer, and provide wider options for urban services. The building 3D-printing system we are proposing for the future society will have similarities to the printers currently using paper. Like paper printers, this “Building 3D Printing System” should vary based on user groups, ranging form family to enterprise, or to an entire society. It can be as commonly owned as a paper printer, and just as easy to use with installed spatial cartridges, as building materials. Furthermore, the “cartridge” itself carries another “Crater to Crater” life circle as a part to the entire sustainable scheme. Read the rest of this entry »