Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Taiming Chen, Zhendong Long
United States

Abstract
What are the social trends and changes that are affecting the development of skyscraper typologies? What is the future for those existing super-tall residential towers that have similar forms and structure systems? What is the next-decade expectation toward residential skyscrapers? How will the skyscrapers respond to the increasing needs in urban density?

Design Gesture
In this project, we are exploring a new typology of tower design by bringing up the idea of “customization in mass-production” for those supertall residential skyscrapers. Architecturally, the design is to utilize the existing structure as the basis and add the new hanging structures in sky lobbies to allow the additional spaces to hang outside of the towers. Programmatically, individual needs, which are varied in time, become the focus of post-built design development. Residents can individually customize their cubic spaces as they need, and the building owner will hang them in front of the residents’ doorway. The fundamental concept in the project is about the users’ engagement in the after-built development process of the tower – the further tower shall have the capability of housing their changing needs architecturally and programmatically. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Alberto Roncelli
Italy

Wildfires started immediately after the appearance of terrestrial plants, 420 million years ago. Natural fires can have beneficial effects on native vegetation, on animals and on ecosystems that have evolved with wildfires. The problem has arisen in recent decades, where we are facing increasing intensity in large fires caused by humans (arsons and climate change). In the case of large and heavy forest fires, it is common to have a totally destroyed ecosystem and, in some cases, the inability to regrow. In recent months we have dealt with the devastating cases of the Amazon rainforest and the bushfires in Australia with over 12.35 million acres of scorched earth and 480 million dying animals. Which role can architecture and architects play in this scenario? Can we suggest new approaches for ecosystem recovery? Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Adham Sinan Abdallah Hameedat
Palestinian Territories-Bethlehem

There’s no room for hope when there is no action. Actions are hope, amid impending danger of looming disaster. Alarms of demise are ignored. When hope is scarce due to inaction towards an immediate and radical response, comes carbon floss as a political statement to counter absurd/destructive reluctance policies, spurring and promoting hope for action as reassurance for humanity. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Yiran Fu, Zhen Meng
China

The project is located next to the campus in Stockholm, where, as a result of the study, water pollution has been a persistent problem. What we want to focus on is the climate crisis and the relationship between building and environmental impact. Our design is a machine driven by wind power to absorb the pollution in the seawater while purifying the seawater and providing fresh water for the residential building on top.

This tower is a self-sustainable public infrastructure. At the same time, it also has the function of enjoyment. Tourists and residents can visit the process of the energy conversion process. This project shows that sustainability is not a burden but should improve the quality of people’s lives and could also be aesthetic and articulate to make a dynamic experience. It’s built right in the middle of the sea and is now part of everyday activities. The tower is ecologically, economically and socially sustainable. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Adam Fernandez
France

MARS, a mythic red planet and God’s incarnation of the Roman wars are indispensable in the conquest of space today.

This planet is situated in the sun’s zone of habitability, but it currently rests in an inhospitable state for humanity. Previously, this planet was known to have living conditions similar to those on Earth as it contained both oceans and an atmosphere. Today, Mars has lost its magnetic field and is struck by solar winds. As a result, Mars is deprived of atmospheric pressure and of water. This star has transformed itself into a cold and radioactive world with temperatures averaging -53° C.

Nevertheless, research is advancing and theories are claiming that it will be possible to colonize Mars by terraforming it. NASA developed a concept presenting the creation of an artificial magnetosphere located at the specific site, called Lagrange L1, which is between Mars and the sun. At this specific site, it is necessary to create an object that generates a magnetic field with an intensity between 1-2 teslas that is capable of protecting Mars from cosmic rays. Read the rest of this entry »

2020 Skyscraper Competition

Gu Jiaxi, Zuo Minghao, Mu Rongxuan. Feng Gang (Tutor)
China

As an important type of urban architecture, shopping malls have been profoundly affected by the rise of e-commerce platforms in recent years. The existence and organization of their buildings are constantly changing. The cyber mall and the commercial space, in reality, are constantly interacting with each other and co-evolving. As one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, Taobao fully demonstrates the strong demand and continued vitality of the Chinese market. Such a “skyscraper” in cyberspace has aroused our strong interest. We hope that by realizing Taobao, Representation to create a possible skyscraper to reveal the current connection between architecture and the information world.

We chose the project location over the highly contemporary Guomao overpass in Beijing, China. This highly dramatic and representative place will better accommodate and inspire the functional setting and contemporary attributes of our architecture.

The building consists of a pedestal connected to the urban transportation system, a mainframe, and numerous movable commercial cabins. The pedestal connected to the city ensures the stability of the entire building, and at the same time serves as a medium to transmit the energy required for the operation of the building; the mainframe is made of high-strength metal. Inside the frame is an elevator that can move in both vertical and horizontal directions. The track network constitutes the internal transportation system of the building; the movable cabin is the key to the building’s innovation and future. The unified modular combination ensures effective universality and integrates multi-functional such as retail, catering, and leisure. Commercial cabin movement is achieved by drone traction. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Zhong Chen, Wenheng Wang, Gengshen Zhai, Naiqiang Yu, Peng Zeng
China

Background
Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated regions in the world. The per capita living area in Hong Kong is only 15 – 20 square kilometers. Many people find it difficult to live here, but most people in Hong Kong are reluctant to leave Hong Kong. Housing prices are also not cheap in Hong Kong, the price of residential buildings in Hong Kong is higher than that in Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, New York, Singapore, and other cities, ranking second in the world after Monaco.

Under the daily impression of how prosperous and luxurious Hong Kong is, there is a group of people living in an environment that is impossible to imagine. “Coffin room” is one of them. The coffin room is divided up and down on the basis of the original plate room. It is converted into six small rooms, each of which is about 1.5 square meters. Some people can’t even stretch their legs when lying down. Another famous example is “cage house”, which is a sleeping place surrounded by barbed wire. It’s like a cage for raising livestock.  These people living in the “cage” are called “cage people” vividly.

In order to improve the living environment and expand land use in Hong Kong, people seem to have racked their brains. A designer in Hong Kong has designed a kind of “snail house” with a sewer pipe as the shell. It covers an area of 9 square meters and is about 2.1 meters high. It is already a quite large house in Hong Kong where land is extremely valuable. In addition, the Hong Kong government has proposed the “Lantau Tomorrow” plan on land supply. It plans to build an artificial island of 1700 hectares in Lantau and provide up to 400000 residential units. It is expected that the first batch of residents will be realized in 2032. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Surush Ameli, Sharareh Faryadi, Laya Rafianezhad, Soroush Attarzade
Iran

After thousands of years of living on the earth, have the man found a way to treat the mother of nature or is it still conflicting with it? Nature has always made all its sources available for mankind without any expectations! As a result of the development of technology and increasing the exploitation of nature, many problems and issues are occurring on the earth, climatically and globally; which cause the reaction of nature. According to the statistics of natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, this reaction has been far increased. The reaction of humans to these disasters is a result of the interaction between natural and human forces. Sometimes this reaction is to deal with these disasters through technology and industry, and sometimes there is no way than giving up and facing many financial and life losses. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Xiangyu Zhang, Jingwei Tang, Qiuyuan Yang, Linxiao Li, Pengfei Li
China

The Mekong River is the river of life in Laos which is the only inland country in Southeast Asia. Khone Falls is the largest waterfall in the world, which provides an important financial resource for local fishermen. In the rainy season, the waterfall brings an abundant variety of fishes which only clusters around the rapids of the Khone Falls. It is not only hard but also dangerous for fishermen to catch fishes there. In the dry season, the water flow is almost dry, which shuts off the supply of fishing on which its economy depends. Fishermen can only build bamboo dams and ropes that are used for fishing in the rainy season. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Johannes Schlusche, Paul Böhm, Raffael Grimm
Austria, Germany

A fair distribution of resources is the basis of a well-functioning society. Pipelines seem to be an important part of such a distribution in the context of energy, but are always the focus of political conflicts and often encounter local dislike. A densely developed pipeline network with its infrastructure is an important requirement for the global economic system based on oil trading. The climate crisis we are currently facing must be reason enough for us to rethink these systems to get independent of oil and gas, which at the same time requires the development of new ideas for the reuse of these pipelines.

The European continent has a vast network of existing oil and gas pipelines like the transalpine oil-pipeline which connects the Italian seaport Trieste with Germany, special the metropolitan area of Munich. It is 470 kilometers long and has a dimension of 100 centimeters each tube. The network primarily serves to supply the refineries in southern Germany but is also connected to other metropolises in Europe via the extensive infrastructure. The towers are designed to be connected to this specific distribution system for alternative use of the pipelines. New systems for renewable energy generation have been known for a long time, but finally, they have to be implemented on a large scale. Decentralization and focus on resources in the respective areas should be in the foreground. Algae as energy resources are in their beginnings and are seen as high potential. Extensive research work has dealt with algae as an energy source in recent decades. As a biofuel, they are up to 6 times more efficient than e.g. comparable fuels from corn or rapeseed. Read the rest of this entry »