Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

Project 6 of 25

Chris Kroner, Swati Salgaocar
United States

Architrash

Scraping the sky
The next skyscraper will not only be built through smart design, but also through effectively advertising itself to the public. Concept marketing would need to help sway public misconceptions about building and programming tall buildings. Looking back to the Chicago Tribune tower competition, skyscrapers and newspapers already have a linked history. This project looks to be marketed as a newspaper to the public before breaking ground to sell the idea to the masses.

Recall the dense masses of medieval and renaissance cities, and the innovation of skyscrapers designs after the New York Zoning law of 1916 as generators for the texture of the tower form. The building is started with large vertical elevators as the main core of the building. This skyscraper is then an aggregation of clustered apartments and programs, spiraling around cruciform steel structure plates, which are attached to the elevators. Aggregated cells of housing wrap program centers, making building clusters. These clusters can be rearranged offering tall or low buildings, and they can be rotated and placed for climatic tuning. The premise behind such a building is based upon problems of urban waste. The clusters sort, clean, reuse and disperse all types of recyclable waste, which becomes retooled for more construction within the skyscraper or becomes products to be sold for revenue. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

Project 5 of 25

Nikolay Simeonov
Bulgaria

Four Seasons Skyscraper

Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, grew rapidly after the fall of the communist regime. It is the most enticing for business and living city in the country. Unemployment rate is less than 3%, comparing with 12% for the state. About 20 years ago, together with the building of the subway line, the boulevard T.Aleksandrov was laid out. The idea is to connect the center with less developed west areas. Boulevard in words, more correctly to say road, generally flanked by old, almost ruin-like housing fund. The building of new structures is impending, the dispute is how dense and high. Sofia used to have fame for green city. The parks and the gardens have been neglected. The asphalt has conquered the grass, almost no new trees have been planted. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

Project 4 of 25

Chris Lee, Marcus Carter
United States

Park in a Tower

Le Corbusier’s Plan Voison, or City for Three Million, introduced a new order to embody what he thought were the spirit and needs of the Machine Age. His towers in a park sought to provide open space to the modern city, though in the end it destroyed the dense urban fabric necessary for vibrant urbanism. Our proposal inverts the building-park relationship by pulling the park into the building thus creating a new typology of the skyscraper: Parks in a Tower.

This new skyscraper rethinks the traditional notions of zoning by pulling the public space up from the street level. Often high-rise developers are required to provide public space in front of their buildings in exchange for additional height allowances. Instead here, the public space penetrates the interior providing an important amenity at all levels. Each level of the park would allow for different uses, vegetation, and possibilities for occupation. By pulling the park into the tower, the building can be urban-friendly, able to be inserted into a dense context. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

Project 3 of 25

Remigiusz Brodzinski, Agnieszka Lepecka, Pawel Pawlowski, Michal Stys, Monika Tutaj-Wojnowska
Ireland / Poland

Vertical Park

Imagine a skyscraper which is not an apartment block or an office building. Instead it is a vertical park that rises into the sky having its head in the clouds.
It’s a place for dreaming, playing and breathing. A peaceful place where in the middle of the hectic city on the 22nd floor there is room for birds chirping, rustling of leaves, lying on the grass and hearing your heart beat. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

Project 2 of 25

Yuki Yoshita, Naoto Kondo, Daigo Kobayashi, Kosuke Okuda, Tatsuya Horii
Japan

Central Park Skyscraper

The 20th Century saw the birth of the skyscraper and the transformation of major global cities. Our proposal examines the skyscraper as a vertical park for high density urban areas. It is divided in four main areas according to its height. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Skyscrapers
In the next few days we will showcase 25 innovative proposals for green skyscrapers. These projects were submitted for the Annual Skyscraper Competition from 2006 to 2009.

Project 1 of 25

Jaume Canals Parellada, Jonathan Arnabat Vila
Spain

Ecological Skyscraper

We designed a building that provides infrastructure, urban facilities, green zone, office and living space. In our view, the real challenge of Mediterranean self-sufficient skyscraper lies not in their design but in integrating these within congested urban areas. What can be designed without damaging historical centres? Read the rest of this entry »

Hillside View - © BIG

Bjarke Ingels Group and Fuglark Architects win the largest ever commission on the Faroe Islands for a 19.200 m2 Education Centre in Torshavn.

BIG, in collaboration with Fuglark, Lemming & Eriksson, Sámal Johannesen, Martin E. Leo and KJ Elrad design the new Education Centre in Marknagil situated on a hillside on the outskirts of Torshavn, to serve as a base for coordination and future development of all educational programmes in the region. As the largest educational building project in the country’s history, the institution combines Faroe Islands Gymnasium, Torshavns Technical College and Business College of Faroe Islands in one building, housing 1.200 students and 300 teachers. Read the rest of this entry »

Urban Art Projects’ sustainable artwork revitalises Brisbane car park

Lasercut Drawing

International studio Urban Art Projects (UAP) has completed a major art installation that transforms the streetscape of Albert Street, Brisbane, through the inventive reworking of an existing multi-storey car park into a highly sustainable, visually compelling art project.

The artwork, ‘Landlines’, by Jennifer Marchant was developed and crafted in UAP’s studio in Brisbane. Wrapping around three elevations of the car park, the piece is created from 549 powder coated, laser cut aluminum panels, all 1.2m x 3.6m. Collectively these components of the design have been beautifully worked to represent the contours of a map of Cunningham’s Gap and the Main Range, Brisbane. Read the rest of this entry »

Knut Hamsun Center
Hamarøy, Norway

Perspective - © Ernst Furuhatt

The Knut Hamsun Center, located in Hamarøy, Norway and designed by Steven Holl Architects, will open to the public on August 4, 2009 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Knut Hamsun’s birth. Dedicated to Norway’s most inventive twentieth-century writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2700 square-meter center is located above the Arctic Circle by the village of Presteid of Hamarøy, near the farm where Hamsun grew up. The building includes exhibition areas, a library and reading room, a café, and an auditorium for museum and community use. Read the rest of this entry »

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) / Ole Scheeren
City of Singapore, Singapore

Aerial View - © OMA

Ole Scheeren of OMA introduces a new residential typology to Singapore with The Interlace, a large-scale complex of interconnected apartment buildings stacked in an innovative hexagonal arrangement, developed by CapitaLand and Hotel Properties Limited.

The Interlace is located on an elevated eight-hectare site, bounded by Alexandra Road and the Ayer Rajah Expressway, amidst the verdant Southern Ridges of Singapore. With about 170,000m2 of gross floor area, the development will provide 1,040 apartment units of varying sizes with extensive outdoor spaces and landscaping. The site completes a green belt that stretches between Kent Ridge, Telok Blangah Hill and Mount Faber Parks. Read the rest of this entry »