Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Meurisse Frederic,  Huyghe Lieselotte
France

The main idea of this project is to create a green ribbon of parks and recreational areas that will connect the Vincennes and the Boulogne forests – the two major lungs of Paris. The ribbon will be equipped with a series of skyscrapers that will inject programs to the city. Some of them will be used as housing while others will have museums or restaurants. Its triangulated steel structure is a three dimensional network of voids and surfaces inspired by the Origami pleating game. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Stéphanie Durniak, Baptiste Franceschi, Anthony Frutoso, Caroline Mangin
France

The city of Marseilles is one France’s principal urban hubs that attract thousands of new residents each year. It has been designated World Cultural Capital for 2013 and many new urban developments are underway. The “Euroméditerranée” project is one of the most important ones and aims to give a new maritime façade to the north.

The idea behind this project is to create a vertical village that integrates to the tens of villages that configure the city. Each village has its own character and function. This project will have housing, offices, commerce, and recreational areas; gardens and parks will be incorporated as public terraces between the different programs and will serve as meeting places for the community. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Kevin Hemeryck
France

The city of Paris is recognized worldwide for its beauty, architecture, and urban planning. Unfortunately the lack of green areas has been a constant problem for decades. The Flying Planame (paname refers to Paris in French slang) is an utopist project that proposes multiple layers of green planes throughout the city. The main concept is to maximize the outdoors areas while making use of the structure for commerce and housing. Similar to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the rice growing terraces of Yunnan, China, this project proposes equilibrium between the natural and built environments. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Andrew Brorson
United States

The Contingency Ark was designed under the assumption that the West Antarctic ice shelf will melt and a great number of cities, including Miami, will be underwater. Its structure was inspired from buildings that have withstood the rising of the sea like the Maunsell Sea Forts in the Thames and Mersey estuaries located off the coast of the United Kingdom.

It is formed by a steel lattice where mobile floating homes will plug-in. The idea is to build a series of these structures in major cities and habitants will be able to move their homes between locations. The basic infrastructure including water, energy, and waste management will be provided by the permanent structure. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Karim Hassayoune, Aude Morgenthaler
France

The Meta-Tower is a skyscraper that grows by slowly stacking projects over the years. It consists of an open structure in which architects plug in buildings according to current economic, social, and cultural conditions. The idea is to create a building with a series of layers that represent a specific moment in time while testing new architectural problems and solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Bunker Arquitectura
Esteban Suarez,  Santiago Gitanjalli, Jorge Arteaga, Sebastian Suarez, Zaida Montañana, Arief Budiman, Adrian Aguilar
Mexico

The Historic Center of Mexico City is composed of different layers of cities superimposed on top of each other. When the Aztecs first came to the Valley of Mexico they built their pyramids (first layer) above the lake of Texcoco. When new and bigger pyramids were required, as the Aztec Empire grew in size and power, they did not search for a new site, they built them covering the existing ones. At the end, these pyramids are composed of different layers of historical periods. When the Spanish discovered America and ultimately conquered the Aztecs, they erected their Christian temples on top of the pyramids. Eventually their whole colonial city was built above the Aztec. In the 20th century, many colonial buildings were demolished and modern structures raised over the existing historic foundations. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Aaron Olko
United States

The Growth Tower was inspired by the possibility of an industry driven by genetically modified and hybrid organic products. Today, the development of organic products for use in every field from healthcare to architecture has become a trend. This progression grows exponentially as the demand for sustainable and responsible products pushes innovation. Where today we may be able to re-grow human limbs and produce organic containers that degrade on demand, tomorrow we may be able to develop and grow genetically modified organic buildings and even entire city blocks that respond and develop to programmatic needs and user desires. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Tomislav Maslovaric
Slovenia

The historic center of Ljubljana, Slovenia, has strict building regulations to preserve its medieval character. The Guardian is a proposed skyscraper of 28 floors that would surpass the tower of the medieval castle as the city’s highest structure. The most interesting aspect of this proposal is the dialogue it creates between existing and contemporary architecture. A provocative organic façade covered with vegetation interacts with the old city while the opposite façade with its minimalistic glass cladding overlooks the modern city.

The first three floors of the building are dedicated to commercial spaces while the rest would be occupied by offices and apartments. The skyscraper sits on top of one of the most important plazas. Read the rest of this entry »

When designing for children, you have to think fun, exciting, and colorful as well as safe, which is exactly what Paris-based firm, KOZ Architects created when they designed the Youth Center & Sports Facility for Saint Cloud, France. What immediately stands out are the brightly colored tinted glass windows, as well as the the modern concrete exterior. And when you see the inside, you realize how incredibly fun it must be to hang out there. This isn’t some candy-coated gingerbread day care center, this is an exciting world for kids to run and jump around in, and hopefully even the adults are enjoying it too. Read the rest of this entry »

The new luxury apartment complex, 100 Eleventh Avenue with it’s glittering glass facade, opens this month. Designed by French Architect Jean Nouvel, the 23-story condominium building faces the Hudson River with a front facade composed of 1,700 panes of glass, each set at a different angles and torques to better reflect the light. It’s a striking building that certainly lends a bit of character as well as glamour to the Chelsea neighborhood. On top of that, it’s aiming for LEED certification, with a long laundry list of sustainable building elements to prove its worthiness.

While the front side of the building is sheathed in glass, the backside is constructed from a simple black brick with windows punched through all the way up to the top. From the outside, the placement of the windows seems random, but from the inside, great care was taken to position each window to provide a picturesque view of a NYC landmark, like the Empire State Building. As Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times describes it, 100 11th Avenue is a, “mix of grit and glamour — embodied in a glittering facade that seems to have been wrapped around the curved front of a black brick tower like a tight-fitting sequined dress.” Read the rest of this entry »