Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Estelle Filliat, Charlotte Ferreux, Duc Truong, Elias Vogel
France

Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. The armed conflicts raging for several months are deteriorating an already critical situation. In addition to causing terrible human suffering, these attacks are destroying Yemen’s unique cultural heritage, which is the repository of people’s identity. Yemen has architectural masterpieces. Shibam is probably the most emblematic example of them. The 16th-century Walled City of Shibam remains the oldest metropolis in the world to use vertical construction, this construction is called « tower houses». The mud-brick high-rises, which stretch up to seven stories high, were constructed from the fertile soil surrounding the city. One of Unesco’s experts, Jacques Heyman, stresses the urgency of the situation : «Today almost nothing has been done to stop the ruin of this city, which is accelerating. If Shibalm is not restored immediately there won’t be much left to restore in 10 years’ time ». It seemed essential to put a spotlight on this threatened city. We must reverse the situation !

The idea is not to resolve an international conflict but to project into a peaceful future. The idea is to propose a sustainable extension of the city of Shibam. The development of the city is both constrained by its ramparts and by the constructive boundary of the mud-brick. The extension of the city is limited both horizontally and vertically. The only possible solution is in the ground itself. The idea is to dig the existing streets. The new Shibam, a natural extension of tower houses, are all roots that directly use the richness of the ground : the heat of the depths, the water of the groundwater, the thermal inertia of the ground, the mud as material and the depths as architecture. The tower is extended from a tower-house to a true skyscraper. Using existing resources under the city, Shibam steers clear from Yemen’s extreme import dependence. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Ngai Hang WU, Han-Hsun, Hsieh, Man Nguyen
United Kingdom

A POST-WORK, POST-CAPITALISM WORLD
Hong Kong, in the near future, where automation has taken control to the full extend. A place where A.I and Robot have replaced 90% of the works. A universal basic income system has been delivered for all unemployed citizens. Human kind progress to a new kind of society: a post-work, post-capitalism world. As most of the white-collar jobs are fully automated, office towers will become useless and empty. However, the need for housing is never reduced. Indeed, since most people have no works, they will spend more time at home and enjoy their freedom. In exchange, people’s hobbies will turn to become their main activities. Thus, this lead to a mass reduction in office spaces, but an increment in housing space. Therefore, a logical policy from the autonomous governments will be executed to re-occupy, renovate and re-alter office towers to become a new type of housing for people, a truly bottom-up approach which create dynamic and democratic community across the ex-economical area of Hong Kong. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Kang Tae Hwan, Kim Min Jeong, Yun Seo Jun, Lee Se Won
South Korea

Have you ever thought about a life without water? If you think of the forest desertification image that you saw through YouTube, you can see little impact of water on human life. It is not well known that when water is not available, it contravenes water human rights, such as discrimination and a threat to safety, and can’t escape from poverty. In particular, water is more than just a drink in India. Every Indian loves their river, crossing over the religions and languages of the times. Before daybreak, Hindus take a bath and pray in the nearby river, they wash themselves with bronze water bottles as a religious ceremony. When religious festivals are held, tens of millions of people in the city are bring together.

Despite efforts to solve the water system, which is based on international and India domestic law, India’s water demand appears to have failed to meet the demand. As urban population continues to grow with the rapid industrialization, additional 1.5 percent of waste water per day for each increasing in population has been made. Water pollution is serious in India, as the sewage treatment facility can only handle 30 percent of the total waste water and the huge volume of waste water is poured into rivers every year. Furthermore, the long lasting culture in India has accelerated river pollution. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Jun Ho Han, Yungi Jung
United States

Blocks in Manhattan are like small fortresses. The high dense development has rendered the whole block to become an interiorized space. There are only a few entrances to these 243,000 square feet of space and it does not lead you to a public space. Is there any way to develop these blocks in New York to have more connections to the community and become less isolated? And could there be a strategy to achieve that while making the block even denser?

The Columbia University campus in upper Manhattan has a potential possibility to achieve this strategy. Although the block of Columbia University has a strong formal boundary than other blocks in New York, because of the intention of Mckim, Mead & White, who wanted to make the inside of the block comparable to the surrounding, it acknowledges the necessity of providing their space to the public, and developing the block as a whole.

On the boundary of the campus, there are ascending entrances to enrich the feeling of spatial shift, and makes the contrast more distinctive between the mundane streets and the open campus. This strategy could go further and create an unexpected open space by filling up and connecting the space in between buildings on the boundary.  Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Seunghwan Jung, Ryeojin Jeon
South Korea

We propose a skyscraper to get fresh water from the waters using the principles of nature. This building has a form that can best collect water vapor condensed in the sea. The condensed water flows to the stem through the trumpet and is fed to a vertically stacked farm.

To reduce discarded water, the water used in each layer is used again in the lower layer after some water purification. The water used up to the ground level is stored in the lower part of the building after being purified. The stored water and harvested crops are transported to the ground through the ship. Utilizing the power of water falling from a height of about 2 km, hydroelectric power is generated inside the stem to produce energy. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Golnaz Mayel Afshar, Faranak Momeni Azandaryani
Iran

The skyscraper aims to generate a solution for the unprecedented air pollution in Tehran, Iran by combining several innovative technologies in one. Tehran’s air pollution has been a decade-old issue, which has exponentially increased, in recent years. On average, one person dies of air pollution causes at every two hours, and people have been chocking to death from the air they inhale. The most significant causes of pollution in Tehran are the overwhelming number of vehicles, loose inspection regulations, high immigration from villages into the capital, non-standard gasoline, and most importantly the topography of Tehran. The deep topography is due to the mountains surrounding the city. This has resulted in the air being trapped. The site has been picked in the center of Tehran where the air pollution is the most concentrated and the topography is at its deepest.

With this aim, the suggested skyscraper would create a new chain system between smartphones, pollution, and architecture. The most important factor is the involvement of people in the appearance of the skyscraper and the amount of data received from the people (through their smartphones) to fight pollution. This is done through an app, which syncs in real time with the skyscraper, creating a spatio-temporal system of visual and spatial syncing between pollution and architecture, through the people.

The app provides different services for the exterior and the interior of the skyscraper on smartphones. The facade of the project is equipped with the quantum stealth material technology, which bends light to create invisibility, in accordance with the level of pollution. The data received form the various directions would be translated into the facade of the architecture. The amount of pollution directly affects the visibility of the architecture. The less pollution there is, the less visible the skyscraper would be since it is in a de-activated state. As the amount of pollution starts to rise, the architecture unhides and is activated in order to fight pollution through the diffusion of catalytic converters infused in a capsule. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Jonathan Ortega
United States

Aviation has made the world a smaller place. A century ago it would take weeks to travel across a continent by rail, and months to traverse the oceans by ship; today, travelers can cross an ocean in a matter of hours and circumnavigate the globe in a few short days. As air travel has shrunk the world, however, aviation infrastructure has expanded exponentially. Today’s airports use a massive amount of space for terminals, concourses, taxiways, and runways.  This growth is compounded by the surrounding roads and highways feeding into, out of, and around these sprawling airport complexes. Moreover, airports are often hemmed in by the surrounding infrastructure, limiting future growth and complicating current designs. The use of verticality of structures, while not new, opens up new opportunities for development and expansion of airports into smaller footprints, leaving more available land for green space as well as for other development possibilities.  Future airports can take advantage of verticality to reduce their land use.

Verticality is not just for infrastructure; it is also the wave of the future for aircraft as well. Vertical takeoff and propulsion systems in future aircraft will minimize the need for the kinds of taxiways and runways that are omnipresent in today’s airports. Eliminating or minimizing the use of paved spaces will allow the available land to be used for alterative purposes, from green spaces and parklands to commercial and agricultural development. This reduction in paved spaces will have other benefits as well, including a reduction in the heat sinks seen in today’s cities and other developed areas.  Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

GuoChao Deng, QingMing Xiao, Yuan Feng, Liwei Shen, Qin Xiong
China

Design background
As the population increases and the global aging accelerates, the cities with dense population are facing the problems of fewer graveyard resources. Japan is the country with the highest level of aging in the world. In Tokyo, the capital of Japan, the problem is even worse. Recent research shows that the average age in Tokyo is growing rapidly, with nearly 25% of people over the age of 65. At the same time, more and more rural young residents are coming to Tokyo, which exacerbated the scarcity of resources in Tokyo.

Meanwhile, the price of graveyard in Tokyo is so high that it costs more than 4,000 U.S. dollars per square meter, which is hard to bear for a Japanese citizen. As a result, most poor people cannot afford a graveyard to place their own relics and loved ones.

The significance of building vertical cemetery: to build a place of spiritual comfort for the living relatives
During the time we grown up, we were told the story about the people after death: their sprits rise to the sky, becoming a shining star. They are watching your life, your progress as well as your life-long career, which endow you the motivation to face the challenge. Based on the humane care for the bereaved family members, we are not only building a place to store the remains and ashes of the dead, but also building a place of spiritual comfort for the living relatives. To this extent, they never pass away. Death is not the end of life. Being Forgotten is. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Katarzyna Przybyła
Poland

Water scarcity is currently one of the major issues of the 21st Century. International conflict about Blue Gold has already arisen and is expected only to increase. Nowadays, over one-third of world’s population lives in water-stressed countries. In addition to population growth, it has been reported that another important cause of water crisis is climate change and its impact on the global water system and the environment. Glaciers, as the primary reservoir of potable water, influence global water management and marine currents. Their melting significantly increase water temperature and decrease its salinity. According to the National Oceanic an Atmospheric Administration global temperatures have been increasing steadily for the past 100 years and it is expected to continue to grow. Anticipated increase of only two degrees will cause vast of marine species stop reproducing and eventually vanish forever. Read the rest of this entry »

Honorable Mention
2018 Skyscraper Competition

Gorproject
Philip Nikandrov
Stepan Kukharskiy, Aleksandr Muraviev, Ivan Mylnikov, Vadim Zamula, Vladimir Travush
Russia

The UN is warning that melting polar ice due to global warming will ultimately redraw the world map within a century. One of the biggest resulting threats around the world is sea-level rise affecting many coastal megapolises, including Shanghai, Osaka, Alexandria, Saint-Petersburg, New York , London etc., and even devastating overpopulated countries such as Bangladesh. Building our cities vertically seems to be the key to salvation not only for coastal population but also for human civilization in general, as the vertical urbanization is the only way to save the land (main natural resource of the planet) from the plague of expanding horizontal urbanization. Stacking the urban blocks with associated infrastructure, recreation and parkland in a third dimension in multiple tiers and levels can increase the city density without compromising life quality and standards and even improving them at height with fresher air, better daylighting and spectacular views.

Project 1111 is the 1111-metres high sustainable vertical city with over 300 floors stacked in fifteen 20-storey tiers with hanging gardens and parks. Based on hexagon plan with 6 wings attached to spiral hexagon structure it creates the mix of transportation modes, including highways for cars (that can drive up to the top level), vertical transportation (zonal elevators and transiting express shuttles), airborne (copters/drones) and vacuum tube trains.  The 350,000 population at 10,5 million sq.m. of total gross area (or 30m2 per capita – the comfortable living standards for a vertical urban habitat) are accommodated at 1.4km2 land plot. Read the rest of this entry »