Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Andrew Brorson
United States

The Contingency Ark was designed under the assumption that the West Antarctic ice shelf will melt and a great number of cities, including Miami, will be underwater. Its structure was inspired from buildings that have withstood the rising of the sea like the Maunsell Sea Forts in the Thames and Mersey estuaries located off the coast of the United Kingdom.

It is formed by a steel lattice where mobile floating homes will plug-in. The idea is to build a series of these structures in major cities and habitants will be able to move their homes between locations. The basic infrastructure including water, energy, and waste management will be provided by the permanent structure. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Karim Hassayoune, Aude Morgenthaler
France

The Meta-Tower is a skyscraper that grows by slowly stacking projects over the years. It consists of an open structure in which architects plug in buildings according to current economic, social, and cultural conditions. The idea is to create a building with a series of layers that represent a specific moment in time while testing new architectural problems and solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Bunker Arquitectura
Esteban Suarez,  Santiago Gitanjalli, Jorge Arteaga, Sebastian Suarez, Zaida Montañana, Arief Budiman, Adrian Aguilar
Mexico

The Historic Center of Mexico City is composed of different layers of cities superimposed on top of each other. When the Aztecs first came to the Valley of Mexico they built their pyramids (first layer) above the lake of Texcoco. When new and bigger pyramids were required, as the Aztec Empire grew in size and power, they did not search for a new site, they built them covering the existing ones. At the end, these pyramids are composed of different layers of historical periods. When the Spanish discovered America and ultimately conquered the Aztecs, they erected their Christian temples on top of the pyramids. Eventually their whole colonial city was built above the Aztec. In the 20th century, many colonial buildings were demolished and modern structures raised over the existing historic foundations. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Aaron Olko
United States

The Growth Tower was inspired by the possibility of an industry driven by genetically modified and hybrid organic products. Today, the development of organic products for use in every field from healthcare to architecture has become a trend. This progression grows exponentially as the demand for sustainable and responsible products pushes innovation. Where today we may be able to re-grow human limbs and produce organic containers that degrade on demand, tomorrow we may be able to develop and grow genetically modified organic buildings and even entire city blocks that respond and develop to programmatic needs and user desires. Read the rest of this entry »

Finalist  – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Tomislav Maslovaric
Slovenia

The historic center of Ljubljana, Slovenia, has strict building regulations to preserve its medieval character. The Guardian is a proposed skyscraper of 28 floors that would surpass the tower of the medieval castle as the city’s highest structure. The most interesting aspect of this proposal is the dialogue it creates between existing and contemporary architecture. A provocative organic façade covered with vegetation interacts with the old city while the opposite façade with its minimalistic glass cladding overlooks the modern city.

The first three floors of the building are dedicated to commercial spaces while the rest would be occupied by offices and apartments. The skyscraper sits on top of one of the most important plazas. Read the rest of this entry »

It is estimated that street lighting accounts for over 30% of all electricity purchased for most cities.  Inefficient lighting wastes billions of dollars each year and can account for 28% of total greenhouse gas pollution produced by a municipality. The City of Sydney, Australia and others across the world are taking a strong look at converting the conventional street lights to more environmentally friendly technologies. Sydney estimates that if their trial is successful, low energy lights could reduce energy consumption by up to 50%. There is clearly a market for low energy street  lights, but unfortunately, most of the designs have been uninspired. This self-sufficient street light breaks the mold. Read the rest of this entry »

When designing for children, you have to think fun, exciting, and colorful as well as safe, which is exactly what Paris-based firm, KOZ Architects created when they designed the Youth Center & Sports Facility for Saint Cloud, France. What immediately stands out are the brightly colored tinted glass windows, as well as the the modern concrete exterior. And when you see the inside, you realize how incredibly fun it must be to hang out there. This isn’t some candy-coated gingerbread day care center, this is an exciting world for kids to run and jump around in, and hopefully even the adults are enjoying it too. Read the rest of this entry »

The new luxury apartment complex, 100 Eleventh Avenue with it’s glittering glass facade, opens this month. Designed by French Architect Jean Nouvel, the 23-story condominium building faces the Hudson River with a front facade composed of 1,700 panes of glass, each set at a different angles and torques to better reflect the light. It’s a striking building that certainly lends a bit of character as well as glamour to the Chelsea neighborhood. On top of that, it’s aiming for LEED certification, with a long laundry list of sustainable building elements to prove its worthiness.

While the front side of the building is sheathed in glass, the backside is constructed from a simple black brick with windows punched through all the way up to the top. From the outside, the placement of the windows seems random, but from the inside, great care was taken to position each window to provide a picturesque view of a NYC landmark, like the Empire State Building. As Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times describes it, 100 11th Avenue is a, “mix of grit and glamour — embodied in a glittering facade that seems to have been wrapped around the curved front of a black brick tower like a tight-fitting sequined dress.” Read the rest of this entry »

Commissioned by the Philharmonie de Paris, this WA Community Awards 6th Cycle winner balances the strict needs of a world class concert hall, with the intricacies of the surrounding neighborhood and the grandeur of the City of Paris. The work is the product of Jungmin Nam, an Award Winning architect now Working at KVA , in Boston, MA. He completed the project while as a student at the Harvard School of Design. Read the rest of this entry »

The United States Department of State recently announced  that KieranTimberlake has won the design competition for the new, United States London Embassy. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Louis B. Susman, and Acting Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, Adam Namm, remarked, “KieranTimberlake’s design meets the goal of creating a modern, welcoming, timeless, safe and energy efficient embassy for the 21st century. Their concept most fully satisfied the requirements outlined in the design competition’s mission statement. The concept holds the greatest potential for developing a truly iconic embassy and is on the leading edge of sustainable design.”

The core design challenge was to bring form to the core beliefs of American democracy – transparency, openness, and equality – and do so in a way that is secure, welcoming, and sustainable.

Located on the Nine Elms site in London, the site is to be transformed into an urban park and garden, designed as a spiraling form and providing strong pedestrian connections to mass transit and the proposed Battersea developments to the west.  The park doubles as a security measure and is a welcome alternative to the walls, fences, and jersey barriers that have come to dominate American government buildings. Read the rest of this entry »