Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Walter R. Hughes
United States

We are faced with a need to implement adequate strategies along the architectural-technological process that include precepts of sustainability to reverse damages infringed upon the environment. In addition to energy performance, the reduction of energy requirements and the introduction of renewable energy, it’s extremely important to reach a zero-energy level.

This proposal is located within a strategic area of the City of Chicago, the birthplace of skyscrapers. At the entrance of the Chicago River and at the head of the Outer Driver Bridge, three mixed-use glass towers, a vertical village of sorts, face Lake Michigan and offer outstanding downtown views. They integrate into the current skyline linking itself to a continuous linear park along Chicago’s waterfront. A pedestrian-friendly promenade at its base with shops, retail, and marina play into Chicago’s dynamic downtown. Its main components are a hotel, office space and residential units served by a multimodal transportation system anchored by a futuristic landing port for autonomous electric flying vehicles, Evtols, which will serve the project and areas nearby. This skyport can handle over 150 landings and take-offs per hour. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Jitendra Shrawan Farkade
India

Flux Haus is a parasitic housing scheme, that would engulf five towers in Hong Kong with single-person pods. The grid structure covered in moving single-occupancy pods is designed to be a “more dignified” alternative to cage homes – tiny dwellings enclosed by a gridded metal walls and large enough for only one bunk bed. It would be built on another building that would contain support facilities, in this case, a housing complex in the Sham Shui Po district in Hong Kong. Given current socio-economic conditions and how they spill into Hong Kong’s housing disparity, it offers a futuristic response to inadequate and undignified living conditions.

The proposal is based in Sham Shui Po, a district in Hong Kong with a high cost of living that forces locals to settle in substandard dwellings such as cage houses. A look into Hong Kong’s cage homes gives us a glimpse of how bad the problem of land scarcity is already. Hong Kong has been ranked the least affordable city nine years in a row.

This project is an attempt to use AI and technology to solve the problem of space scarcity. This combination of intelligent machines and humans is an adaptive and evolutionary way of living. As people change, so do their houses. The house understands the inhabitant and provides for their needs. So you won’t own a specific pod. You can board any pod and that pod will adapt according to your needs.

Each pod would be suspended from the grid that would encompass the five towers in the Green Harbour Tower complex. This structure is envisaged as a grid of metal rails. As part of the proposal, the existing building will be adapted to contain all the communal spaces, including bathrooms and kitchens. The pods will then be programmed to take occupants to these spaces when required. Robotic arms would allow for a self-constructing system through an ever-growing rail system that adapts to the population of the housing complex. As a result, the grid structure would autonomously expand over time. Along with this, Flux House’s AI system would also determine the movements of the pods, finding free spaces to dock them and arrange the pods to create communal spaces. This system would create an ever-changing environment adapting to varying conditions and requirements.  Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Anjan Mondal, Chaitanya Goyal, Chinmay Chowdhary, Dewesh Agrawal, Kartik Misra
India

‘All war is a symptom of the failure of man as a thinking animal.’

The Anthropocene has witnessed prolonged periods marred with plagues and calamities. But none has been of the magnitude caused by expansionist conflicts, and identity politics.

The turmoil caused by wars is unparalleled. Millions have lost their lives and millions have been forced to migrate and dwell in disarray. The world now possesses enough firepower to annihilate itself.

Upcycling fire
The proposal envisions a world order that is free from armed conflicts and the fear of the tendency to self-annihilate itself. It calls for complete demilitarization and destruction of military equipment throughout the world, with the subsequent upcycling of embodied materials and energy in the form of the peace-scraper. Major constituents such as steel and aluminum would be used to form the structure and the living pods. The weapons-grade nuclear material will be the source of clean nuclear energy.

Peace-scraper
The peace-scraper is envisaged as a vertical mixed-use development in regions most affected by wars. The community of the state-less migrants, torn apart by the exploits of wars, will populate the tower. It will stand as the emancipator of millions, created, ironically, from the very means that orphaned them of their land. The program includes a nuclear reactor to cater to the energy needs, skill development center, school, and higher education facilities and markets. The ground will be developed for sports activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Arnold Siregar, Patar Aprianus
Singapore

Background
Papua is the largest province of Indonesia and located in the west part of the island of Papua. Its great natural beauty and resources have provided a living for a population of more than 1 million people. The amount of tribe in Papua is more than a thousand tribe which give its complexity of living in its natural habitat. To this day, most of this tribe is still living in primitive life with no touch of modernization. Poverty, health, and education issues have been the main issues over the years.

Main Idea
The idea of Jungle Fair-Scraper is a springboard for a bright future in Papua as this tower can link each district and as a landmark of their location who stay in the midst of the jungle with difficult access due to an extreme topography and minimum infrastructure to connect one to another district around. Jungle Fair Skyscrapper as a torch of new hope for young Papuan in the future without even forcing someone away from their lovely hometown. The tower provides education facilities, health care, and government services. Jungle Fair Skyscrapper is a “SQUARE” for the neighborhood. Also, the skyscraper idea is so relevant for the extreme nature of Papua as it’s surely can reduce the carbon footprint of the development in this scenic place.

Inspired by the local traditional houses, Rumah Honai and Rumah Pohon (also known as Rumah Tinggi), the building is a hybrid concept of both local architectures. The vertical accents on the wall of this both traditional building also shown again on the exterior of the building. We decide to adopt the idea of Honai and Rumah Pohon and mix them together to create a new face of local architecture that can represent Papua from all cultures and backgrounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Zhou Yun, Zhao Wenxin, Kong Jining, Wang Xiaojing, Dong Junfeng
China

At first, cities and nature were distributed horizontally, but the small scale of cities ensured the contact between people and nature. Gradually, due to the expansion of the city, the city and nature became more and more distant, almost showing a state of separation. Only a small part of people on the edge of the urban areas can enjoy the natural environment. Therefore, we want to build a High-rise architecture to seek an ideal model for the harmonious coexistence of city and nature. In this model, people will not only enjoy the convenience of city life in architecture but also get the intimacy and comfort of nature.

We redefined the horizontal distance between the city building and nature, then changed it into the vertical distance to shorten the distance between city life and nature. Our initial idea was to extract the skyline of the city and attach a mountainous “natural shell” that matched the skyline, so as to minimize the distance between the city buildings and nature. However, such ideal conditions cannot meet the needs of lighting and ventilation that architectures need and cannot be realized. Then we re-examine this issue from the perspective of “handstand”. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Arman Salemi, Laura Clark
United States

This project aims to speculate on the potential future of incentivized zoning in New York City. The proposal is for the tallest building in Manhattan, surpassing the new World Trade Center and the slender towers in midtown. This proposed site for this project is Billionaire’s Row, located in midtown Manhattan – an area known for its extreme wealth. Though New York City is a diverse urban landscape, this area is known for its extreme gentrification, resulting in a neighborhood that is largely commercialized that lacks affordable housing, public space, and a sense of community. The proposal aims to build a Vertical City, one that reflects the diversity of New York City into a single tower.

The resulting tower has bespoke villas for the eight richest men in the world – Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg. Each of the villas was designed by a different architect, ranging from Robert AM Stern to Bjarke Ingels, that have been matched with each billionaire. The result is a sky-high display case for the world’s greatest starchitects. We are marketing the next level of luxury – buying air space instead of an apartment. We are aiming to sell air rights to 0.01% – with our new model of real estate you can now “buy the sky.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Layton Reid
United Kingdom

Ethos
This project seeks to use the detritus and waste elements of production to create an attractor, both economic and social, a free territory for the dispossessed, offering accommodation, leisure, employment, and health.

Typology
The building takes the form of a series of ribbons rising from the landscape to a stoa above this augmented market of interchange, celebration and shared hope, self-administrated, a patria of the air.

Concept
The issue of inequality plagues the world, and refugees and migration receive little credit for their life-giving entrepreneurs, This project creates a vessel for an opportunity, a new territory forged from the industrialized world’s detritus, a land above borders which cleans and links the oceans, a  new tech business-focussed Dubai-Vegas, where the ethos of the migrant can be celebrated, a  yearning for freedom and a search for success. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Alexander Carolan
United States

Issue
One of the largest challenges in the world is the refugee crisis. In 2017, the crisis had affected an estimated 65.6 million people and the number continues to grow. As of 2019, the total number of migrants who have lost their lives on the journey out is a shocking 377. The term refugee is defined today as a group of people displaced from their home country due to persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. As the number of struggles continues to increase around the world, the population of displaced people proportionately increases. It is reaching an all-time high. As they assimilate, housing should provide a bridge between refugee status and permanent residency. Currently, refugees have inadequate housing. Not only is there too little housing, but the current camps also do not provide adequate support to find jobs, gain an education, support cultural activities or build communities. Camps are meant to be short term housing solutions. A more permanent housing community can provide support to establish new roots, to allow refugees to rebuild their lives and become engaged members of the community. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Jo Jin-Woo, Park Ji-Su, Lee Hui-Yeol, Woo Jong-Sung
South Korea

New architectural, social and cultural activities through recycling of waste
We are trying to find ways to deal with living and industrial wastes in the world. There have been various attempts, but the method of utilization is not enough, only focusing on the treatment of waste. Only 33% of the 1.3 billion tons of garbage per year are recycled, and another waste is incinerated and buried, polluting nature and the city. We propose a self-sustaining and recycling center that handles the waste of each area of ​​the city based on easy transportation and management by locating the existing suburban treatment facilities in urban areas.

It is installed in urban parks and idle sites with structured process systems. It not only promotes production and consumption activities through recycled products but also attracts citizens with a vertically expandable space and Pilotti based on the absence of recycling, thereby providing architectural possibilities and cultural diversity as well as providing the symbolism of the building itself.

In this building, the waste in the designated area is collected and recycled, and the recycled items made are again given new value. To treat each zone waste, it is suggested to classify the waste into 7 types (paper, plastic, iron, food, wood, glass, concrete). The materials that have undergone sorting and crushing are subjected to a detailed recycling process, and each raw material is largely produced as a recycled product having three uses.

First, it becomes the self-supporting material of a vertically expandable building. Aluminum cans and waste rebar are melted to produce reinforcing bars to be the frames of trusses. Waste concrete is used as building materials to build buildings, such as recycled aggregate, which plays the role of building the foundation of the building. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2019 Skyscraper Competition

Hao Wang, Xiaoyu Cao,  Junyi Zhao,  Dingyuan Lu
China

Since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, humans have gradually begun to live in groups. Initially, humans spontaneously formed a settlement of human factors.

With the improvement of productivity and the factors of production, the settlement has developed into a county with a city wall as the boundary. Along with the large increase in population, the elements of human survival exceed the capacity that can be carried by the state and the county, and cities with density requirements appear.

When people got into high-density cities, the stereotyped urban form brings a lot of contradictions to people’s production and life. With the increase of volume fraction, where will the steel forests go?

In Koolhaas’ ‘Delirious New York’, in the tradition of the science fiction tropes of Jonathan Swift and Jules Verne, Russian Modernist architects used a portable pool infrastructure to escape Soviet oppression and make it to the United States of America. Meanwhile, the architects of the”Wandering Turtle’, Brodsky and Utkin, opted instead to remain in Russia to produce” an escape into the realm of the imagination that ended as a visual commentary on what was wrong with social and physical reality, and how its ills might be remedied”.The decisions to relocate or to remain are both basic human rights and can be applied as strategies for the making of utopia. According to the 2006 Stern Review, around 200 million people will be permanently displaced by 2050, through an amalgamation of complex economic, social and political drivers, exacerbated by increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions. Rather than ‘fighting’.governments, together with planners and architects, need to envision built environments that embrace the enemy.

When people got into high-density cities, the stereotyped urban form brings a lot of contradictions to people’s production and life. With the increase of volume fraction, where will the steel forests go?

Here we explore the possibilities of future urban development. Looking at the path of urban development, the future development of the city will no longer be gradually developed along the original path but will produce a breakthrough change. The city no longer has a standard definition but evolves into a human survival complex.

We have the theory of ancient sages, based on their setting of ideal cities, abstractly design our prototype city. The cinema city has a strong regularity and is a typical circle structure, which is divided into five layers from the inside to the outside. People and functions of different classes are distributed between these five layers.

Although the prototype city you want, because of its perfection, people’s lives are not perfect, so spontaneous spatial distortions have arisen. These spatial distortions are rooted in people’s lives. They connect the entire city in series, making the city more connected and making the city more vibrant.

When these basic spaces are more and more, they will spread throughout the city, and their appearance will be that the city becomes more integrated, and the space they fill is integrated with the space of the original city, making the city nearly one. Kind of materialization. The circular urban layout naturally has a kind of centripetal, people will involuntarily gather to the center, and the center towers will not be squeezed by the surrounding buildings to become higher and higher.

In the end, the city gradually became a tall tower, and the whole city became our skyscraper. Our utopian skyscrapers.

The above is our vision for the future city that is a skyscraper.