2024 Skyscraper Competition
Honorable Mention

Shen Chengzhi, Chen Jiahao, Xu Yi
China

Once there were trees full of birds, Meadowlands vibrant with flowers;
Carefree the songs our children once sang, Gilding our minutes and hours.
Clouds came and covered the sun, The breath of the baleful unease,
Turning to ashes flowers in their fields, Silenced the birds in their trees.

In nations facing upheaval, a deluge of refugees emerges, each representing a family’s tragedy. While we cannot halt these tragedies at their source, our aim is to construct a sanctuary resilient against disasters. We aspire to commemorate the former glory of cities and civilizations, igniting the refugees’ drive for progress. Read the rest of this entry »

2024 Skyscraper Competition
Honorable Mention

HSH Design Studio
Habib Shahhosaini (principal), Zahra Alishi, Yasna Aliakbari, Sahar Rezaei, Kousar Panahi, Sara Soleimani, Soheyl Behbodi, Asma Irani, Armaghan Shoaei
Iran

Nowadays, everybody discerns the tourism industry as the leading industry of the third millennium.

Based on the predictions made by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), the number of international tourists will reach two billion people in the next 20 years with an average growth of 43 million tourists per year.

Tourism, with all its sub-branches, is the sturdiest, most stable, and safest sector that can offer innumerable chances for employment and significant activities to the inhabitants of the planet. Actually, the tourism industry can support today’s global macroeconomic circulation in a peaceful context and away from environmental risks in an established and developable way.

In line with moving towards sustainable development, the tourism sector can comprise a large amount of economic and social strategies of countries in a promising way, and accordingly, one of the key concerns related to tourism is tourists’ residence. Since tourists must settle in an appropriate place and live there to stay and meet their basic living needs, therefore the diversity and proliferation of accommodation units is an evaluation index in the direction of the countries development level. Read the rest of this entry »

2024 Skyscraper Competition
Honorable Mention

Yinuo Zhang, Jialu Huang, Binbin Ye, Ya Yu
China

Recently, the news of the earthquake in Nengden Peninsula in Japan has aroused widespread concern around the world. As an island country, Japan has been threatened by various natural disasters since ancient times, which have had a far-reaching impact on its environment, economy and society. In view of the earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, typhoon and other natural disasters faced by Japan, we have deeply studied the current problems and put forward targeted design solutions.

Design concept
Our design concept is to build a “mobile regeneration island” to cope with various natural disasters facing Japan. When a disaster comes, the regeneration island can move in real time according to the location of the disaster, thus reducing the impact of the disaster. Our research found that the impact of the tsunami was mainly concentrated in the shallow sea layer, so the regeneration island designed a rapid sinking mechanism, which could quickly avoid the tsunami. Read the rest of this entry »

2024 Skyscraper Competition
Honorable Mention

Void Studio Architecture + Research Ltd
United Kingdom

A day in the life of an inhabitant of the Weave.

In the vibrant centre of Bangkok, Nara awoke on the The Weave’s 65th floor; an urban mixed-use tower, emerging from the fabric of South-East Asian urbanscape. An essential solution to the issue of overly dense valuable urban land, whilst preserving the unique characteristics of Thai street culture.
An interlocking timber-frame forms a layered topography of sun-facing urban rainforests and food gardens, the tower stands as a testament of the interplay between human engineering and nature’s unruly beauty.

Stepping onto her balcony, Nara finds herself immersed in the sensory garden embracing the facade. The defining feature, a timber lattice, intricately intertwined with the native flora, creates a dialogue between the rigid precision of architectural design merged with the natural tapestry of the urban rainforest. The natural feature of the façade maintains the temperature throughout the day, with less temperature fluctuations, as Nara experienced in her old apartment building.
‘Breathe in, breathe out’ whispers Nara as she walks towards her allotment. The community aquaponics garden allows residents to cultivate their own food, therefore, increasing locally sourced produce and a circular economy within the tower. The surplus produce is either sold at the Skytrain platform farmers market or supplies the food pods within the tower. The water that sustains the aquaponics allotments is captured early in the morning by fog collectors, which recirculates the moisture from the urban rainforest façade and integrates it in the tower’s food system. Utilising nature as a collaborator in the building design creates a healthy metabolism from which both human and plant life thrive. Read the rest of this entry »

2024 Skyscraper Competition
Honorable Mention

Taigyoun Cho, Yejin Hwang, Subin Lee, Seoyoon Jang, Seungyeon Kim
South Korea

Have you heard of Ice Stupas? It’s a method developed by the residents of Ladakh, nestled near the Himalayas, to combat water scarcity stemming from the gradual melting of Himalayan glaciers. They gather small snowballs and stack them into cone-shaped towers in their villages, allowing water to trickle out slowly as needed. When water is required, they carefully chip away at these towers to access the stored ice. However, projections indicate that the complete melting of the Himalayas could occur by 2100, rendering these small ice towers insufficient to prevent such a scenario and ensure a reliable water supply. Moreover, these ice structures easily melt during the summer months. In response to this challenge and to safeguard Ladakhi culture and livelihoods, the concept of ‘Skycrafted Glacier Pinnacle’ has been developed. Read the rest of this entry »

2024 Skyscraper Competition
Honorable Mention

YiWei Chen
China

Urbanization is a dynamic evolution in which old buildings are inevitably metabolized to give rise to new ones. Whether they are metabolized or how they are metabolized, these heritage sites constitute the unique historical memory of the cities they inhabit, reflecting the urban landscape and cultural environment of their respective eras. Therefore, how do we decide which heritage sites in our cities should be metabolized or preserved? How do we define protected buildings? Determine protection levels? And who should define them? Is it the government, experts, or citizens? What criteria should be used to measure and evaluate them?
From the past to the present, most heritage sites that have disappeared from our history have permanently vanished, with only a few remnants remaining as ruins. Therefore, in our study of urban historical processes, we often have to piece together their outlines through fragmented literature. However, every building that has existed is part of the city and its cultural environment, and each has its value for protection and research. But our physical space, in its limited dimensions, cannot preserve all the buildings that have ever existed in the city. Read the rest of this entry »

eVolo Magazine is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Skyscraper Competition. The Jury selected 3 winners and 15 honorable mentions from 309 projects received. The annual award established in 2006 recognizes visionary ideas that through the 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 NOMAD METROPOLISES designed by Chufeng Wu, Chang Lu, Bozhi Zheng, Duo Wang, Shuxiao Zhang from China. The project investigates a mobile city that plugs-in into existing infrastructure and provides new services to the host city. Inhabitants migrate to different locations as a city instead of as individuals.

The recipients of the SECOND PLACE are Dennis Byun, Harry Tse, Sunjoo Lee from New Zealand for their project OCEAN RE-CLAMATION SKYSCRAPER. This mobile oceanic skyscraper moves along the Pacific Garbage Patch to collect and recycle the garbage.

K8 FOREST LIFT OFF designed by Ahmad Hafez and Hamzeh Al-Thweib from Germany received the THIRD PLACE in the competition. Their project in the Amazon Rainforest conceives a new urban development model that prioritizes the well being of the ecosystem and its biodiversity.

The Jury was formed by Kim Gyeong Jeung, Yu Sang Gu, Min Yeong Gi [Winners 2022 Skyscraper Competition], Dr. Sina Mostafavi [CEO SETUParchitecture studio, Associate Professor Texas Tech University College of Architecture], and Kathy Velikov [Principal rvtr, Vice-President ACADIA, Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning].

First Place
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Chufeng Wu, Chang Lu, Bozhi Zheng, Duo Wang, Shuxiao Zhang
China

Where our future inhabitation will be led to?

As of the 2000s, over-centralised urbanisation and the explosion of the population contribute to the soaring of housing prices in major cities of the globe, which, inevitably causes a severe reduction in the affordability of housing for the middle and below class, and irretrievable damages on our environment.
Today, the majority of our megacities’ outlanders, usually those young immigrants, only share a small area of inhabitation. Nevertheless, in the future, global coastal cities are estimated to shrink by 1.79billion square kilometers in total by 2100, given the sea level rise under the global warming. So, where their future inhabitation will be led to?

With the development of transportation, people’s mobility between cities has become stronger. Job opportunities and resources drive people to move, so migration is becoming increasingly frequent both domestically and internationally. The motivation for migration must be good, but the process of migration is always painful for your pocket and mental health. Frequently shifting settlements also means the waste of resources and the reduction of sustainability.

This project illustrates a brand new model of our future inhabitation. One metabolistic agglomeration that could formulate communities of all kinds and could be placed wherever the tenants want. Read the rest of this entry »

Second Place
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Dennis Byun, Harry Tse, Sunjoo Lee
New Zealand

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and global oil spill have been accumulating in the Pacific Ocean for decades. In recent years, the effects of this environmental disaster have become increasingly visible, with reports of dead marine life washing up ashore with stomachs full of plastic waste.

While many efforts are underway to reduce plastic waste and oil spills, such as recycling programmes and the use of biodegradable plastics, we propose a bold new idea that takes plastic recycling to new heights.
The skyscraper would be a shining example of innovative and sustainable architecture that addresses the problem of plastic pollution while also promoting biodiversity and wildlife conservation. The building’s exterior facade would be made entirely of recycled plastic sourced from ocean waste. But the true innovation of this idea lies in repurposing rubbish into reinforced plastic as a new building material. The once hazardous small plastic bits will be moulded into a solid structure you can no longer consume or entangle, instead inhabit. Thus re-creating a safer environment for sea animals and nature.

The tower is designed to move with the rubbish gyres (garbage patches) to collect and recycle its content. The movement of the gyres is primarily driven by ocean currents and wind patterns, so the organic facade and curved tower will naturally shift with the current if positioned near any major rubbish gyres. All the rubbish is sorted and taken to a material factory to be repurposed in the construction of the tower. The tower works in tandem with time, with the continuous construction of the plastic bird nesting tower and the cleaning of the ocean allowing a new mass breeding of once-endangered marine life. Read the rest of this entry »

Third Place
2023 Skyscraper Competition

Ahmad Hafez, Hamzeh Al-Thweib
Germany

The Amazon Rainforest, a vital component of the global ecosystem, produces 20% of the world’s oxygen through its photosynthetic processes. Sadly, it has been facing a rapid decline in biomass and biodiversity in recent years, largely due to human activities such as “Slash and Burn” tactics employed by loggers and cattle ranchers, facilitated by government policies that prioritize economic development over conservation. While climate change is a contributing factor, the majority of the destruction is due to human actions. Read the rest of this entry »