Honorable Mention
2017 Skyscraper Competition

Joanna Targowicz, Mateusz Binkowski
Poland

Death and Oblivion
Death is inseparable aspect of our life. Cemeteries are usually located very close to us, occupied a lot of valuable land within city center which can be returned to citizens as a new, vibrant public space. However, it is very important to take care of our history and personal experiences, and share them with other people. Nowadays people tend to forget about importance of achievements done by our ancestors. Constantly changing world needs a new kind of medium to immortalize people’s cultural impact on society.

Data Cemetery
The following is a proposal of new unique form of cemetery, not as a burial ground but infinite archive of memories and civilization milestones. Cloud like structure of the building is filled with diamond data storage particles made from ashes of the dead. The data cubes contain their speeches and messages to future generations. It provides a unique opportunity of reviving memories of other people, and proves that everyone has a moralizing story to tell.

Testament of Civilization
Rapidly growing and constantly changing, chaotic world also needs a solution oriented towards creation of protected archive to preserve world heritage and achievements of world’s brightest minds.  Over the centuries many cultural relicts, works of art and manuscripts has been destroyed in social and economical conflicts. The Cloud in its diamond-based memory, also stores this type of data in a form of brightest people’s memories that can be presented by using holographic projections. Instead of creating depressing, silence empty space, the complex works as a learning facility and a monument of all humanity.

Tree of Knowledge
Building acts as a modern type of memorial tree that can survive harsh environment and natural disasters, because of its structural integrity. Its shape forms a sculptural timeline spanned across full height that represents current condition of the society. Thicker branches are sign of natural cataclysm, war or epidemic, thinner ones represent a peaceful time.

Diamonds are forever
Traditional methods of data storage are very fragile and have live expectancy between 10- 30 years. Books, photography and films are also very vulnerable to external factors.

Human body contains 23% of carbon, which can be transformed to diamonds by applying pressure and high temperature. Recent studies lead by Siddharth Dhomkar, a physicist at the City College of New York demonstrate the possibility of using diamond as a platform for the super dense optical data storage by creating imperfections in their atomic structure.

By forming a system that can survive couple thousand years intact, the common conception of ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ is denied. The Cloud is a monument of people immortalization.

Archiving Machine
After entering the complex, the body is transported to underground part of the building where the cremation process takes place. After cremation carbon is separated from the ashes. Next step is heating amorphous carbon to temperature of 2500°C to create graphite. Then the temperature is lowered to 1480°C and 5.99843885 × 10^9 Pascals of pressure is applied.

After the process, the data is put into diamonds by creating laser engraved, sorted imperfections in its structure. After the process is completed fresh “Archiving Cells” are placed into selected Memories Cluster and become an integral part of the building.

To provide self-sufficiency, the building is powered by geothermal power plant located in lowest part of the building. The Cloud is also reducing a carbon footprint of our society by converting excess CO2 into diamond composite which is used to reinforce the main structure of the building.

New Beginning
Because the data stored inside diamond memory are almost indestructible Cloud Archive will be a greatest achievement of mankind. After global cataclysm it will remain a silent witness of our society and will become guidance for the new one. Maybe someday, someone will discover an intact data, which lay new foundation for another civilization. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2017 Skyscraper Competition

Lisa Albaugh, Ben Bourgoin, Jamie Edindjiklian, Roberto Jenkins, Justin Oh
United States

London’s skyline can be thought of as a collage city – where the unique individuality of each tower prevents it from engaging with the urban scale of its surroundings. This divergent urban order is neither unique to London nor a condition that will diminish without careful and direct intervention. Our project seeks to address this collage condition by creating a complex that is at once individual and collective as a field of pencil towers blending seamlessly between one another – creating a new and iconic urban order as an archetype for London’s continued growth.

Bishopsgate Goodsyard is the largest remaining undeveloped piece of land in central London, however it is not vacant. Currently occupied by a massive brick viaduct and bisected by an Overground rail-line, the Bishopsgate Goodsyard is a unique opportunity for density and diversity to redefine the conventions of the typical skyscraper while addressing the distinct character of the site.

The project is organized into four main components: a high-density tower, a mid-rise neighborhood, a train station that bridges between the two, and a park landscape that mediates between the existing viaduct and the various access points throughout the site.  Each of the four components are given their own unique character, and by blending them into a continuous field they produce a differentiated system that accommodates diverse and overlapping programs at a hyper dense urban scale.

This project decentralizes the typically bulky tower core into finer perimeter elements. By rearranging the crucial tower components to the exterior – structure, elevators, stairs, and mechanical systems – the tower facade is instead articulated by the elements that are so often hidden away, creating a distinct appearance from street level and against the urban skyline.

Early material studies focused on bifurcation and “bundling” techniques to visualize complex mathematical formulas, exploring potential moments of density versus open and loose strands that suggested larger voids or spaces.

The concentrated “bundling” of towers allows for a closer proximity between each high-rise while maintaining significant views, light, and air. These towers converge and diverge – floor plates connect and split apart – addressing the diversity of uses occurring within the tower through scalar shifts in the available area ¬– from residential units to hotel units, corporate offices to start-ups, large retail stores to quiet cafés. This layering of buildings and programs causes the silhouette of the project to change from every perspective – its appearance is never the same from any two angles in the city – it is curious, ethereal, and poised.

The blending of four distinct architectural typologies addresses a diversity of urban functions, from living, working, recreation, and transportation. Respectful of its greater surroundings, this proposal creates a distinct sense of place in the city of London, a significant contribution to her public realm for pedestrians and city alike. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2017 Skyscraper Competition

Zhiyong Dong, Jiongcheng Mou, Xiuping Han, Xingyu Liu
China

Manhattan is the most densely populated district of New York, where there are massive towering skyscrapers. Although the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern metropolis, it’s necessary to pay attention to the existing problem when we concern the superiority of skyscrapers at the same time.

However, skyscrapers in saving the land are not absolutely, and it is actually have very high requirements on the surrounding environment, such as road traffic, virescence, parking, etc. The higher the building is, the more the need for the surrounding facilities and open areas. For the whole city, the density of dense high-rise buildings can not only bring inconvenience to people’s lives, but also make people feel depressed, and it’s not conducive to people’s physical and mental health.

In order to solve the problems such as the narrow space of the city, the traffic congestion and so on, we upgrade the ground, dividing the urban space into two independent parallel spaces. Ultimately, the parallel Manhattan born. Each person, or everything, will produce different results in different spaces, but the time in this space is the same as that of the original urban space.

The new urban space is created in the parallel space, which is characterized by diversified functions and diversified forms, which is suitable for the diversity of different needs, and provides users with many choices. All kinds of public spaces carry various functions such as transportation, communication, rest, walking, watching, fitness, entertainment, catering, presentation, education, celebration and other functions. A variety of people, a variety of activities, a variety of events and a variety of stories converge to generate the vitality of the place, which is the charm of parallel space. The residents and foreign tourists who are desirous to read the city, experience the city will choose to enter the parallel universe to enjoy the life, enjoy the happiness. Parallel space has become the source of city environment, the essence of multi-culture carrier and the unique charm of the existing building, also the intensive high-level problem of skyscrapers has been solved.

In view of the height of skyscrapers in Manhattan, we set up the parallel space above the ground 120m. Taking into account the lighting of the lower space, we choose glass as the main structural material. In a variety of building materials, due to the property of glass——reflective and transparent, the glass is not blocked from the original facade of the buildings. In terms of visual and spatial principles, existing buildings will not be weakened, and with light and movement of people, the whole space is endowed with vitality .For the structure, the shape of Pyramid, aspect ratio is 4:3, and majority hemline is 16m, minority 36m, in order to distinguish different space size. The netted steel not only plays the role of supporting and carrying, but also endows the glass with a kind of strength and beauty. Pyramid belongs to the ancient Egyptian where there are expansive. By using modern material to write the most ancient symbols, new glass Pyramid and Manhattan skyscrapers become into entirety.

Parallel space has important significance to establish the city space, project, and the new order. With the development of the city, the population density and the problem of traffic congestion will follow. Accordingly, the parallel Manhattan, the parallel New York, the parallel the United States or even the parallel world will successively come into being. Read the rest of this entry »

2018 Skyscraper Competition is open for registration.

eVolo Magazine is pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 Skyscraper Competition. The Jury selected 3 winners and 21 honorable mentions from 489 projects received. The annual award established in 2006 recognizes visionary ideas for building high- projects that through the novel novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.

The FIRST PLACE was awarded to Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu from the United States for the project New York Horizon. The design proposes a continuous horizontal skyscraper around the full perimeter of a sunken Central Park. The project would create 7 square miles (80 times greater than the Empire State Building) of housing with unobstructed views and connection to the park.

The Hive, designed by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, and Chengda Zhu from the United States received the SECOND PLACE. The project imagines a vertical control terminal for advanced flying drones that will provide personal and commercial services to residents of New York City.

The recipients of the THIRD PLACE are Valeria Mercuri and Marco Merletti from Italy for the project Data Tower. The proposal envisions a sustainable skyscraper in Iceland designed for Internet servers.

Among the 21 honorable mentions there are skyscrapers that purify air, buildings conceived to create rain for the driest regions on Earth, vertical cities, sensory towers that explore our psychological relationship with space, and skyscrapers that prevent cities to sink.

The members of the Jury are: Matias del Campo [principal SPAN], Thom Faulders [principal Faulders Studio], and Marcelo Spina [principal PATTERNS].

The 2016 Skyscraper Competition was made possible with the sponsorship of our media partners and v2com.

eVolo Magazine is also pleased to announce the publication of EVOLO SKYSCRAPERS 3, the third book in the Skyscraper Series. This publication includes the best 150 projects received in the 2014, 2015, and 2016 competitions. This is a limited edition book and only 500 copies will be available worldwide.

-> Pre-Order EVOLO SKYSCRAPERS 3 (July 2016 delivery)

First Place
2016 Skyscraper Competition

Yitan Sun, Jianshi Wu
United States

As the busiest and most densely populated county in America, Manhattan has always been a big fan of skyscrapers. Limited by its street grid, however, buildings in New York City are often skinny and tall. Rather than constructing another slim tower by building upwards, “New York Horizon” envisions a new paradigm by digging downward to Central Park’s bedrock, which will reveal the park’s rugged natural terrain while also creating a continuous wall of skyscrapers around its periphery to house habitable spaces with unobstructed views of the new underground park.

Envisioned by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux over 150 years ago, Central Park was so beautifully designed that the people of today overlook the fact that it is actually an artificial piece of land built upon the once rugged, bedrock-strewn landscape, which had to be heavily sculpted in order to show any semblance to a park. The project’s inspiration builds upon Olmsted’s theory of providing equally accessible common green space to all citizens and giving people “greater enjoyment of scenery than they could otherwise have consistently with convenience within a given space”. His vision, however, is slowly disappearing as skyscrapers continue to rise higher than ever around the park. And unfortunately, only the affluent few that can live and/or work on top of these towering skyscrapers are given the benefit and enjoyment of the park’s total stunning view on a daily basis.

The project was conceived to contrast against the city’s densely constructed buildings and towering skyscrapers, as well as, to provide New Yorkers with a natural environment that they could enjoy and use as an escape from their busy urban lives. Consequently, the soil removed from the park would be used to add a more dynamic landscape (mini-mountains, hills etc.) to underdeveloped plots all over Manhattan. This would create a new urban condition, where the newly constructed landscape becomes a cohesive part of the city.

This reimagined parkland would allow for hiking, climbing, swimming and other outdoor activities. And finally, the reflective glass façade canvassing the wall of skyscrapers will reflect the park’s natural terrain and create the illusion of a never-ending natural world within the heart of Manhattan’s concrete jungle, while also offering New Yorkers’ a perspective of the landscape that is not limited by the park’s physical boundaries.

The 1000 feet tall, 100 feet wide wall of skyscrapers/mega-structure would create 7 square miles (80 times greater than the Empire State Building) of habitable indoor space, while introducing more natural diversity and verticality to the once flat 1.3 square mile Central Park. The seven-mile-perimeter wraparound mega-structure would contain apartments, retails, museums, libraries, etc. within the 100 feet deep inhabitable walls, with an unobstructed view and connection to the park. Following Manhattan’s city grid, there are main circulation cores (elevators) that would align with every single street from 59th to 110th street to transfer people down to the park, as well as to other various floors. Secondary circulation (ramps, stairs) would connect separate spaces in various scales between the cores.

The goal of the concept is to reverse the traditional relationship between landscape and architecture. Instead of building distant, flat landscapes to surround and complement individual architectural buildings, the natural landscape is now the centerpiece. In this case, the dynamic landscape is surrounded by characterless architecture that tries to be nothing but mirror that reflects nature.

In the heart of New York City’s concrete jungle, a New Horizon is born.

Read the rest of this entry »

Second Place
2016 Skyscraper Competition

Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, Chengda Zhu
United States

Drone technology, adopted by many large corporations, has become a leading trend in the field of fast-delivery, aerial mapping, commercial advertising, government inspection, and filmmaking. As recent years have witnessed a rise in the development of drone technology, several major corporations, such as Amazon, DHL and Walmart, have begun investigating the use of drones in high-speed delivery service. As more and more people live on internet-based lifestyles, these “small flying robots” could easily become an ordinary part of future everyday life. The demand for high-speed drone delivery is estimated to increase continuously in the upcoming years. However, legal restrictions on the navigation of drones are currently standing in the way of drastically broadening the use of drones in various aspects of our daily lives. No-fly zones and conditions to maintain visibility with the drone at all times are two of the main constraints.

The Hive is an infrastructure project that can better meet the emerging demand for incorporating advanced Drone technology into daily life in New York City. The project was proposed as an alternative asset argument for the usage of the land on 432 Park Avenue, the project aims to create a central control terminal that hosts docking and charging stations for personal or commercial drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) in the center of Manhattan. The current air-zoning regulations are to be re-shaped in a vertical highway model around a tower. This centrally controlled model will be more appealing to the legislative sector as it adheres to the concerns about regulating drone traffic. The primary location of the building does not only gather the commercial power of Manhattan, but also stands away from the no-fly-zones set by the FAA.

Live Façade
The Modules on the façade are designed to fit nine different types of drones, categorized by the shape and scale of their landing fixtures (point, bar or ring). A sequential study of how to categorize non-uniformed industry products into modular fixed architectural structures was conducted through a series of simplification of the geometries and articulations of the forms. The different sizes and geometry of the drone paired with different size and geometry of the module result in a variety of configurations.

To provide a safe landing environment, the tower projected a new method for drones to dock horizontally onto their corresponding platforms with the fitting shape and scale; the platform with docked drones can be flipped vertically to be in parallel with the tower façade. The façade is constantly animated as the platforms flip outwards and backwards to nest back into it.

The overall organization of the façade uses layering as means to maximize surface area, with two overlapping exterior layers and an inner layer. A hierarchy is established, as the size of drones and modules is smaller in the inner layer creating a more intricate interior that can be accessed by the smallest drones by a major opening in the façade.

The transparency of the tower changes constantly, while the tenants of the building-the drones fly in and out. The flickering lights of the battery station behind each module help with navigation and also indicate the occupancy percentage of the building as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Third Place
2016 Skyscraper Competition

Valeria Mercuri, Marco Merletti
Italy

Data is proliferating: every transaction, entry, emails, and even every mouse click is stored in a server. Annual global IP traffic will pass the zettabyte threshold by the end of 2016, and will reach 2 zettabytes per year by 2019. Considering this, a problem in the near future will be to find a place to store this information.

A data center is the physical location hosting different servers used by many types of companies, it is used to store and process all the information we generate every day.

Today data centers consume a lot of energy and have a large carbon footprint: servers absorb a lot of electrical power and they need to be constantly cooled down to avoid overheating problems.

The solution for the future is hosting data centers where the power is clean and the costs are low. For this reason some companies have been started to think about Iceland. Iceland is a strategic location for data centers for 3 reasons:

• Location: its placement between Europe and the U.S. means that companies can run their web services for both continents in one location;

• Renewable energy sources: Iceland can offer data center services powered by 100% clean energy (hydropower and geothermal) for the same price or less than web services powered by fossil fuel-based grids in other locations;

• Climate: Iceland’s proximity to the Arctic Circle allows exploiting cold temperatures and a fresh natural breeze that could be used to cool down the servers avoiding the costs of a traditional cooling system.

Our project is a vision of how could it be a future green data center located in Iceland. A data center is often a large industrial building without a significant architectural connotation, a big anonymous container. The main issue of our project is to investigate a new morphological solution that could represent both the complexity and the importance of the building into which we keep our data. Above all, we conceive the data center’s configuration in order to maximize the use of the available renewable energies and also to allow the re-use in a sustainable way.

The tower is conceived as a giant 3D motherboard with a cylindrical shape. On the external façade are fastened all the hardware components, otherwise the internal part is empty. This void is a technical space with a double function: first, it is the main air duct of the cooling system, and second it is a space where the pods can be moved to the ground floor, during the maintenance and the upgrade phases. As well as in a computer case, a huge cooling fan on the top of the tower activates a natural chimney effect, thanks to which each pod takes the natural fresh air from outside and releases the warm air inside. A part of this air is expelled from the top of the tower, another part is re-used to heat the laboratories and the greenhouses situated in the basement. During the winter the warm air released by the server could be also used to heat the houses in the surrounding neighborhood.

The modern data center is a particular building in continuous evolution: as well as in a motherboard, where the components are always replaced and updated, also the façade of the tower is adaptable and in continuous evolution; in fact, depending on necessity, the density and the position of the pods can freely change increasing the height of the tower. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition

Chen Linag, Jia Tongyu, Sun Bo, Wang Qun, Zhang Kai, Choi Minhye
China

The medical and health organization of a country includes the country’s security and improves the health of the people, the treatment of diseases and injuries of persons, organizations, systems and processes. The hospital plays a very important role in the system. However, the world is generally encountered in the case of lack of hospitals to serve the patients, at the same time, the chaos of the hospital streamline is not convenient for patients to use.

A space and tectonic responsive hospital is easy to assemble and reflects the society. It shows the BMI from the morphology of itself. Morphological changes can be suitable for various terrain environments, at the same time according to the functional requirements to change in morphology.

The medical building tries to solve the medical problems, so that the building can reflect the urban living conditions of the urban human settlements directly. The building collected within 10 km radius of the residents’ health data, which is reflected from the building surfaces directly, and the internal function (inpatient, emergency treatment, medical technology, and the outpatient which contains 50 departments) consistently.

Patients arrive at the hospital, and enter the core tube directly to the emergency treatment and the outpatient departments directly. The patients who need the in-patient treatment will transfer to the wards. The idea of the hospital is that the patient does not have to move by himself, according to the motion track, the wards can move to where it should go to, like the outpatient space for further consultation with a doctor instead. However, if there are not too many patients of any department, the space for the outpatient and in-patient will be folded to form a therapy garden space.

The whole building is divided into a frame, a core tube structure, a large assembled body, which is an independent department module, and a small mobile body which is a medical cubic module inside the large assembled body.

Technology
The small medical cubic module could move on the track in and among the large assembled bodies to form the body of the independent department.

Driving device
It is the mechanism that drives the actuator to move, according to the command signal sent by the control system, the module moves with the aid of the power element. It is the input of the electrical signal, the output of the line and the angular displacement.

Detecting device
It is a real-time detection of movement and work, according to the need to feed back to the control system, and sets the information after the comparison, the implementation of the organization to adjust, to ensure that the action is in accordance with the requirements of the scheduled.

Control system
One is centralized control, which is the total mechanical control by a microcomputer to complete. The other is decentralized (level) control, which uses multiple computers to share the control. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition

Jayong Shim, Dailong Ma, Tai Feng
United States

New York City is a city of large high-density buildings that sets a trend for people’s life and goals. A lot of people are still trying to come to the city with a utopian dream. However, at same time, people are running out of town because of they struggle with urban life causing little social diversity. There are countless skyscrapers in NYC but people cannot recognize existence of the places because the buildings don’t have specific features.

A definition of a place is a particular portion of space, whether of definite or indefinite extent. However, in the building, the space is not limited by the fundamental dimensions of “place”. The place is a space people can feel the existence and specific emotion. The morphosis design of organic creature integrates diverse experience that blurs the boundary between spatial relationships. The space uses the city’s landscape as a background, and façade as an experimental symbol, which is stunning the society and evoking people thought to explore more value of the community. Spatial atmosphere also creates an opportunity to experience some special interior phenomenon and moment which people may get inspired and surprised. It can be considered as a chance to provoke people’s passion about aesthetic urban life and turn those passions into a diverse way of thinking.

In the façade, morphosis design of organic creature makes many different diffuse light qualities, which can produce various interior atmospheres. When people experience the space, the bright light lead and gather people who are losing way from dark area, then the dark zone attracts people who are holding a strong curiosity. The contrast of small-scale rooms and large-scale atriums gives people various spatial inspirations on the difference of urban scale.

The entire project does not only synthesize the fundamental function with morphology of the building design, but also consider large-scale urban environment as an experimental field to explore and provoke people’s diversity. Read the rest of this entry »