Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Umut Baykan, Doğuşcan Aladag
United Kingdom

Tourism is a socio-economic phenomenon. It enables people to encounter new experiences all around the world. Contributing significantly to the global economy, it benefits local employment figures whilst providing opportunities for cultural exchange. The number of tourists has risen dramatically since 1950: from 25 million to 1.2 billion in 2017. Movement of so many people at seasonally determined periods of time creates massive demand for accommodation. This demand presents a problem across urban and environmental scales.

For the majority of touristic destinations, demand spikes in certain parts of the year. Traditionally, the model has been to build hospitality facilities such as hotels to meet this demand. As a result, they account for a disproportionate percentage of the built environment. Since these facilities are vacant of people and purpose outside of peak season, they are routinely shut down in order to limit maintenance and resourcing costs. Unfortunately, for settlements that are reinvented as tourist destinations, the impact is significant and detrimental. The local economy becomes fragile, the cultural life is undermined, all to the point whereby towns become more like ghost-towns when the tourist season is over. Profit becomes a higher priority than the conservation of local beauty for developers. This attitude is unsustainable, as the quality of the landscape is often what attracted tourists in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Dimo Ivanov
Switzerland

Inspiration
Inspired by professor Donald r. Sadoway’s notion of giant container-sized liquid metal battery, Ephemere high-rise proposes the idea of a floating power station and liquid metal battery charging station.

Liquid metal battery
The team of professor sadoway – ambri aims to develop a giant battery that fits in a 40-foot shipping container for placement in the field. And this has a nameplate capacity of two megawatt-hours. That’s enough energy to meet the daily electrical needs of 200 households. Ambri’s cells are strung together within a thermal enclosure to form an ambri core. The ambri core is ‘self-heating’ when operated every couple of days, requiring no external heating to keep the batteries at temperature. The ambri system comprises multiple ambri cores that are strung together and connected to the grid with power electronics. The configuration of the ambri system is modular and can be customized to meet specific customer needs.

Offshore wind, wave and tidal energy
Ephemere high-rise uses 100% renewable energy sources for electricity production. Harnessing energy from offshore winds, waves, and tides holds great promise for our world’s clean energy future. Energy production is just one of the valuable resources our oceans and coastal ecosystems provide. We can successfully develop offshore renewable energy by ensuring that energy projects are sited, designed, and constructed in a manner that protects our fragile ocean ecosystems. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Jo Palma + Partners Corporation
United States

The Atlântica self-rising tower investigates the future of construction and explores the boundaries of automated building assembly and self-organization. Inspired by the behavior of insects like ants, termites and bees and their ability to construct large-scale habitats for their communities, research and investigations on self-assembling components demonstrate the potential future for construction. Envisioning that building parts can organically self-assemble into optimal, self-supporting configurations in an oceanic environment, the Atlântica tower concept challenges the ordinary construction process by building from top to bottom and from underwater up.

By utilizing a magnetic system embedded in the structural frame of the individual components, the building members could be joined together based on predefined and optimized geometry and construction sequencing algorithms. The building form would change based on the number of members deployed underwater, which could be continuously modified by addition or subtraction. These modular components would be produced off-site, shipped to desired assembly location and released underwater, allowing the self-assembly process to begin. Triggered by increased water entropy, the individual pieces would find their adjacent matches and start the forming process of the structure.

The modular framework of the Atlântica tower allows for different program types with easy adaptability. From housing, lodging and working uses to vertical farming and sky gardens, Atlântica could become a community within itself. Read the rest of this entry »

2021 SKYSCRAPER COMPETITION

Editor’s Choice 
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Maryam Fazel, Sukaina Adnan Almousa, Maryam Safari
Iran, United Kingdom, United States

Following the tragic earthquake of 2017 in west part of the Iranian terrain, people of the affected area have witnessed a devastating feeling; fleeing their homes or trapped under buildings. This tragedy and similar ones in the world are all due to many reasons that together weaken the supporting system offered to people in earthquake regions. One of the main causes of such disaster is the lack of alarming systems that can detect the approach of earthquakes. A post-disaster situation of kiosk and devastation is caused also by lack of efficient evacuation structure that can help people run for a shelter in a short time.

Addressing these problems, this project is a proposal of a skyscraper that responds to earthquake before it happens. In this premise, the structure works on two levels; one is the monitoring system, which constitutes of a biotechnological facade containing microfluidics channels continuously culturing genetically engineered harmless bacteria that is engineered to acts a biosensor system. The other level is the core of the building and the evacuation system. The skyscraper is built on a shock absorbent structure that will increase safety factor once in an earthquake emergency. It is -on the other hand- supported by pods that are set on platform scattered along multiple levels. These pods work as assembly points that can then fly people to the nearest safe zone. Users of the building can access the platforms easily. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Haotong Sun, Zonghao Wu, Fengwei Jia
China

The melting of arctic ice
A reduction in Arctic summer ice cover has become more intense in recent years, culminating in a record low of 3.4 million square kilometres in 2012 – 18 per cent below the previous recorded minimum in 2007 and 50 per cent below the average in the 1980s and 1990s. Land ice is also retreating and permafrost is melting.

The retreating ice brings easier access to natural resources such as gas and oil, thus prompting increased human activity that may threaten the already fragile ecosystems and wildlife, the UN Environment Programme’s report says.

The reason of melting
1.The reasons for the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe are manifold. More heat is brought into the Arctic through the atmosphere and ocean currents, while the melting itself prompts further melting by reduced reflection of incoming sunlight.

2.White ice and snow acts as a mirror, reflecting 85 per cent of solar radiation; however, ice-free areas of the ocean reflect only 10 per cent and the bare tundra only 20 per cent.

3.Black carbon (soot), a short-lived climate pollutant, is also believed to contribute to warming by darkening snow and ice and reducing reflective area. UNEP and partners last year launched the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to address black carbon and other such short-lived climate pollutants.

4.The thawing of permafrost will also contribute to further warming as the organic matter stored therein – up to 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon across the northern hemisphere – also thaws and decomposes, releasing the trapped carbon as CO2 and methane. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Luis Daniel Pozo Torres
Bolivia

Project statement
… a year ago my family , mama , pa , my  oldest brother , my youngest sister and me  left our home and  our country, back then there were so many problems, pa says because politics, I still don’t understand  I only remember that we had to grab the most important things and get out of the city very fast.

We spent many days in many countries looking for a place to stay, then one day pa told us we where invited to go to the Helix, that sounded very strange and also exiting,  so we went there, when i first saw it I thought it was a big escalator to the sky, is was like an invitation to climb and leave the ground.

When we arrived we where welcomed with a meal and hot Chocolate, we spend many hours talking with many Doctors, then pa got a key and we went up with the elevator, that ride was fun because it was like been inside and sometimes outside with green gardens everywhere.  I still enjoy this ride. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2018 Skyscraper Competition

He Jianqiao
China

Socialist Zygmunt Bauman introduced the idea of liquid modernity; he described its characteristics as “increasing feelings of uncertainty and the privatization of ambivalence”. It is a kind of chaotic continuation of modernity, where a person can shift from one social position to another in a fluid manner. Nomadism becomes a general trait of the ‘liquid modern’ man as he flows through his own life like a tourist, changing places, jobs, spouses, values and sometimes more—such as political or sexual orientation—excluding himself from traditional networks of support, while also freeing himself from the restrictions or requirements those networks impose. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Lucas Stein, Théophile Péju, Pierre-Loup Pivoin, Raphael Saillard, Bernard, Touzet
France, United Kingdom

CONTEXT.  A logistic management of spirituality
Mina Valley is a spiritual site of the Muslim religion, located in Mecca surrounded by dry and hostile lands of Saudi Arabia. The site is a key point during the journey between Mount Arafat and Stoning of the Devil. Pilgrims reproduce the original Abraham’s gesture by temporary living during few days in tents on mattresses lay on the ground. Currently, Mina could be described as a tide of about 100 000 tents spread on 9 km², made of fabric steel and concrete. An enslavement of the natural landscape only benefiting to the logistic management of one of the largest human gathering ever organized. A pilgrimage attendance which undoubtedly will increase in following years, thanks to the aerial transport development. Saudi Arabia has officially announced 3 millions of pilgrims in 2012. However, this type of temporary housing can’t be considered as sustainable, tents are occupied only 3 days a year. Which make the Mina Valley a ghost site for the resting 362 days. Moreover, from penurious African regions, more than 1 million sheeps are shipped in order to be slain for the Aïd ceremony. A short-term solution meaningful of the Saudi Arabian management of the event.  Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’s Choice
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Christopher Pin, Timothy Lai
Canada

“Though technological processes are intrinsic when discussing a strategy for urban water sustainability, it will play a minor factor in the overall design.  Lotus seeks to strengthen public awareness of the fragility of Urban Fresh Water.”

THE PROBLEM
Rising global population, mass fringe migration to urban cores, and rising tides are just a few reasons that heavily indicate a heightened concern surrounding Urban Water Security for the future megacities.  Water pollution and supply deficit are issues that will require a solution that is both sustainable and iterative.  As cities continue to trend towards Megacities, strategies to mitigate fresh water scarcity will be at the forefront of the urban dialogue.  While focus on current technology is important, developing new means of dealing with water depletion is crucial for urban health.

China: A Nation Prone to Fresh Water Crisis
Currently, due to increasing urbanization, the municipal water demand in cities of China are projected to grow 70% in 2030 (Wang et al., 2017).  Though China’s need for renewable freshwater continues to escalate, availability is barely one-third of the world’s average.  Shanghai falls amongst China’s 36 worst cities regarding water quality (Zhen et al., 2017), and between 2010-2012 it was reported by the cities water census that 3% of local surface water was clean for fish farms or household use.  Shanghai exemplifies the battle China is fighting from one mega city to the next, and can be utilized as a case study for the proposed socio-political strategy surrounding water sustainability.

THE SOLUTION
Lotus intends to provide a unique dialogue surrounding water sustainability, approaching urban fresh-water as a communal urban focus.  Lotus is an architectural monument that cultivates onus and stewardship regarding the cities freshwater, while emphasizing water experientially to increase quality of life in the urban core.  Though technological processes are intrinsic when discussing a strategy for urban water sustainability, it will play a minor factor in the overall design.  Lotus seeks to strengthen public awareness of the fragility of Urban Fresh Water. Read the rest of this entry »