Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Zhichen Gong, Yong Chen, Tianrong Wu, Yingzhi He, Congying He
China

Background
The world is witnessing the highest level of displacement on record. According to UNHCR, by the end of 2016, 65.5 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violation. That was an increase of 300,000 people over the previous years, and the world’s displaced population is still at a record high. Also, during the year, 10.3 million people were newly displaced and the speed of new displacements was equal to 20 people every minute.

Under such circumstances, how to resettle the innocent people in war, not only by providing temporary camps, but also by enabling them to continue their lives in familiar environments and maintain normal function of society is the project of the propose. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Fábio Ferreira Neves
Switzerland

Graubünden is the largest and one of the mostbeautiful cantons in Switzerland. Entirelymountanious, it has manymarkable structures on the mostspecial and not easlyacessible places. Theyused to befortressesfrom the 13th and 14th century whichwereprogressivelyabandoned. Nowadays, theseruinscrown somedistintictive topographie location of the SwissAlps and due to the difficultaccess, remainforgotten.

Known as a perfect place for winter sports, Switzerland has manyspecial and longhikes to do in summer as well.The design workswiththeseelements, a family of reusedfortressesalong the trails.

Concept
To be able to protect the ancient structures, somemonolithic roofs are addedtobring a new life to theseruinedfortress. Itsexistingstone walls, frame the floor of the new volumes. This adition covers, protectthe oldruins and providenewshelters for the hikers. The new landmarkshave an important impact thatguide the hikers. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Jae Min Jo, Geonuk Yun, Kyungjun Park, Hobin Bae, Jiyeon Kim, Weonkyung Cho, Ganghui Lee
South Korea

The project began with the belief that skyscrapers, a collection of architectural and high-tech technologies, could be an alternative to solve the Earth’s environmental problems. In this sense, we have been trying to take an architectural challenge to preserve glaciers that are melting as a result of global warming.

Site
Our project destination was focused on Greenland’s continental ice sheet to propose a structure that prevents the melting of glaciers. Especially, it is intended to prevent the melting of glaciers formed between canyons. Glacier is exposed to the air at the area where it connects to the sea, resulting in faster melting. Furthermore, the melting rate is further accelerated by Crevasse and Moulin which are formed by flowing down water. We would like to prevent the loss of glaciers through proposing a structure that would freeze the ice tightly again in areas where it melts.

Idea
In this project, we would like to propose a structure that can make the ice density of melting glaciers hard again. The construction process also had to be coordinated with the structural characteristics of the glacier.

The Ice-dam we are proposing here is a skyscraper that functions to prevent the melting of glaciers. In particular, this project is proposed with the idea of the structural module called Ice-ball, which is a tectonic element that strengthens the freezing of glaciers and forming the construction structure and space. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Amanda Gunawan, Joel Wong
United States

The future of cities
With continuous expansion, will cities reach a looming point of plateau where its growth starts to hinder its efficacy? In the first place, why do we live in a city? What makes living in a city so attractive? It is simply a hyper-efficiency consisting of a working system that is the result of the combinatory forces of great infrastructure and density, working tangentially to support growth. This growth makes a city abundant in opportunities but what then happens to a system whose demand and supply forces becomes imbalanced? There becomes an oversupply of inhabitants and a lack of infrastructure supporting it and vice versa- the state that most “great” cities are headed. Over-pollution and over-population will occur and efficacy becomes compromised with growth. When the drawbacks of automation start to outweigh its benefits, where do we go next and in what direction? Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Adam Fernandez
France

Badgir (In Persian literal translation:bâd « wind » + gir « catch ») is a traditional element of Persian architecture used from centuries to create natural ventilation and to refreshinside the buildings, more particularly in the living room area. These wind towers are vertical ducts looking as large chimneys allowing to capture and to direct the winds towards the interior of buildings. We can see them in important quantity in the desert area of the center of the country.

The interior of the tower is vertically separated into several ducts to allow the circulation air descending flow (bringing freshness) and air ascending flows (expelling hot air) currents thanks to the differential atmospheric pressures created. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Bilal Torğul, Mücahit Bilal Goker
Turkey

There have never been so many people on earth in history as right now. As everyone knows, with the industrial revolution, the standards of living raised and became more available. The result was the population explosion. In the last century, the world population increased fourfold. The unprecedented rate of population growth caused unequal income distribution. While some people increase their wealth,the rest became more and more poor. This economic progress formed classes among people. And the poor have been forced to live in worst. For the cities, which had these kind of differences, the slums were the inevitable end. So what can be expected for the next century?

This process didn’t happen in the exactperiod for all countries.  While some complete their demographic transition, others were at the first stage and until they complete the transition, an unbelievable income inequality occurred between countries. Last century, the richest countries were only 3 times richer than the poorest. Today the gap is like 100 to 1.That cause an unstoppable increase on amount of people live in slums,even though the rate of population growth has been decreasing. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Tony Leung, Miranda Chan
Hong Kong

In the age of “Level 5” (fully automated) autonomous driving, a vehicle (e.g. Toyota

E-Palette) can be adopted as Mobile Green house, travelling between farmers and buyers directly.

These vehicles can be charged at vertical “docks” equipped with PV charger and drainage system when idle. The best dock available will be selected by central computer and directed by GPS automatically to suit solar demand of different crops. The “dock” becomes a ever-changing organism with its own ‘metabolism’

Recent development in hydroponic technology makes vertical planting possible. Not only farmers but enthusiast or family can hire or own a mobile green house for weekend farming. The docking ports are connected by double spiral ramps; car lift and staircase are provided for services and pedestrian circulations. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Muhammed Aydem, Burak Arifoglu, Omer Faruk Demir
Turkey

In 1992, Edward Said wrote that the ever-increasing scale of displacement in the world marked the 20th Century as “the age of the refugee, the displaced person, mass migration”. Since then, there has been an even more unprecedented increase in the number of migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced persons worldwide. According to the UNHCR reports, by the beginning of 2018, 71.4 million individuals left their places to live elsewhere. This number included those who were forcibly displaced due to war, famine, natural disasters, political conflicts, violence, or human rights violations, as well as returnees and stateless persons. If this were the population of a country, it would be the 20th largest in the world.

We see this as an increasing problem of homelessness, not defined only by lack of shelter or space, but also by a lack of belonging to a place. We believe that architectural design should be able to offer solutions for people who find themselves, voluntarily or involuntarily, in such a condition. How can these people create their own lives without being restricted by states, authorities, institutions, or established socio-cultural norms of thinking and behaving. How can they transcend the borders that they are faced with? Can the borders of countries be interpreted again to provide a space where people can create their own lives and establish their own belonging? Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Tsung-Ying,Hsieh, Hsuan-Ting, Huang
Taiwan

Based on the report of urban planning in Singapore, our chosen domain is gene storage in 2100. Estimates based on bacterial genetics suggest that digital DNA could one day rival or exceed today’s storage technology. Gene Tower is like a home tree between citizen and a huge seed that symbolizes the gene carrier. Gene Tower provides a new strategy of gene storage for big data. Synchronously, it brings an idea of delighted sharing and environmentally friendly lifestyle to the rapid development of city. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2019 Skyscraper Competition

You Gundon, Lee Minwi, Kang Ryunhong, Moon Junho
South Korea

With the advent of a new era, cities must be able to accommodate more demands than they have in the past, and the role of cities has become even more extensive. Indeed, the city requires dense residential space, a common use space where people can be together, and green spaces. Facing such demands, the cities are changing rapidly, and the speed of the change is accelerating.

However, going through past experiences have revealed that rapid urbanization engenders various urban problems such as lack of residential space, slumming, harms done to existing urban context and tradition, and adulteration of environment. Many of Europe’s metropolises were able to cope with such challenges and slowed down rapid changes because they were able to accommodate the changes over long periods of time. On the contrary, in the cities of newly developing countries or other traditional cities where there is no sufficient infrastructure, it is difficult to control the speed of change and it is accelerating. These cities need a new approach because they have to cope with the changes and resolve those issues in a short period of time.

We propose a vertical urban space as a measure that traditional cities can adopt to overcome rapid urbanization and meet the demands of rapidly changing cities, all the while preserving tradition. Read the rest of this entry »