Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Zeng Shaoting, Liu Chenyang
China

Dubai is one of the most popular cities in the world, lies directly within the Arabian Desert. With sandy desert surrounded, Dubai has a hot desert climate. Summers in Dubai are extremely hot, windy, and humid, with an average high around 41 °C (106 °F) and overnight lows around 30 °C (86 °F) in the hottest month, August. Most days are sunny throughout the year. Winters are comparatively cool with an average high of 24 °C (75 °F) and overnight lows of 14 °C (57 °F) in January, the coolest month. Desert terrain, extremely high temperatures, and limited rainfall have historically made agriculture unworkable in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates

Dubai currently imports over 80% of its food. The main food influences were from nearby countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, East Africa, and Indian. In order to reach the city’s targets, locally grown food not only has to expand its growth rapidly, but it also has to meet the uncompromising health standards of the UAE, and cater to the diverse population that enjoys a wide variety of international food.

The Burj Khalifa, known as a skyscraper in Dubai, has been the tallest structure and building in the world since its topping out in 2009. Our skyscraper project is Agri Khalifa aimed to use innovative agricultural technology to find ways to grow locally-sourced produce in Dubai and change its current state. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Wei-Zhe Lin, Chun-Yi Yeh
Taiwan

In many studies and in the experiment, using the ripple of sound, you can move tiny sand particles, and arrange the special shape of the ripple. If we amplify the energy of the sound and the energy of the precise intersection of the peak and low sound waves, we can push larger objects; from the sand on the mobile desktop to the construction of skyscrapers.

In the physics field, the sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as air, liquid or solid. The curtains, slabs, and floor plans in this skyscraper all use dynamic sound energy to generate ripples and transmit by “ultrasonic media” to precise locations. this will be a future skyscraper constructed and integrated by physics, architecture, and artificial intelligence.

Through multiple “AI ultrasonic devices”, aka (AIUSD), to control and shape the “ultrasonic medium” between them(AIUSD), aka (USM). An AIUSD is like a dumbbell shape and can emit ultrasound at its endpoints and centers. For each one to shape the USM by AI information system technology, send out the accurate frequency and target position to achieve the function of shaping. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Anni Cai, Jinwei Hu
China

Due to human activities, the global temperature continues to rise, and Australia will enter a dry wildfire season each spring and autumn. However, Australia is facing an extremely hot year in 2019. The continuous high temperature and drought have caused drought to detonate in September. The fire, which quickly expanded and spread to other states, caused a rapid decline in air quality, devastated millions of hectares of land, and claimed the lives of hundreds of millions of animals and plants. A series of effects even lead to the irreversible extinction of endangered organisms.

The skyscrapers are located in the Gondwana Rainforest on the border between New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, including rainforests that have never been disturbed by humans and reformed rainforests. About 200 species of rare and endangered flora and fauna inhabit it. Significant biodiversity is of great significance to world scientific research and the protection of animals and plants. The site of the skyscraper can share, protect, and study this endangered variety of rain forests and ecosystems. It can quickly rescue the endangered animals and plants in the vicinity of the disaster and increase the possibility of animal and plant heritage.

The way skyscrapers protect animals and plants stems from the story of Noah’s Ark. When disaster strikes, they can save endangered animals and plants and preserve the genes of endangered organisms. The idea of a construction robotic arm is derived from the legs of arthropod insects. The robotic arm makes the building mobile and carries endangered creatures when disaster strikes, satisfying the function of escape. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Chuwei Tan
China

Ghat
Ghat, a term used in the India subcontinent, could refer to the series of steps leading down to a body of water or wharf. There are numerous ghats along the Ganges, and people who live on the steps are also called ghats.

Flood
In India, monsoon waterlogging was commonplace, but this was a frighteningly different sight. The whole city was gradually sinking, everything was drowning. It produced a sense of being choked and trapped.

Dying Water – Pollution & Gag
From the urban perspective, the mighty flood could easily break through the most elaborate and calculated control system in the world, paralyze a well-organized city in operation and left a nightmare mess.

Rivers and streams have borne the brunt of the recent urban explosion in India, a nation whose population has nearly doubled in the last 40 years to 1.35 billion. Unplanned growth has led to the use of water bodies as dumping grounds for sewage and industrial effluent.

In addition, riverbanks, wetlands, and floodplains have been claimed over time by infrastructure, slums, offices, and housing developments – all of which have narrowed natural river channels and distorted flow, greatly reducing the ability of India’s rivers to buffer flooding. It also has taken a toll on biodiversity.

RESEARCH
The field research focuses on Chotte Lal Ghat – almost adjacent to Asia’s largest flower market – the Mullick ghat flower market. Businessmen, tourists, homeless, lots of different people streaming in and out, make this place one of the busiest ghat in Kolkata.

We recorded human activities on the ghat plaza for a whole daytime, in order to figure out the matrix of this multi-function ghat.

CONCEPT
This project aims to provide a solution for the destruction of monsoon flood and environmental pollution caused by human activities, return the wetland, riverbank to nature.

1. Escape Monsoon
   The new ghat slides flexibly with good movement rigidity, can escape from the flood in monsoon season, which is of great significance for avoiding catastrophic accidents and huge economic losses.  Meanwhile, the capsule lifts help to transport people and supplies.
2. Water Circulation
   The pumping station on the ghat center pump water from the river and supply domestic water for ghat residents after filtration and purification. Then, the collected sewage will be filtered again and discharge back to river.
3. Sociability
   Ghat, as urban Space of Sociability, is the portrayal of the city.  By reference to human daily life demand researched in Chotte Lal Ghat, more architectural elements could be brought to the new ghat, like amenities, bedding, factories, and water circulation system. Hence, the ghat society is able to keep itself running when sliding to the sky.

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Francis Cheung, Cheung Ka Wah Francis
Hong Kong

Breaking Flat Floor Plates
By rethinking the arrangement of floor plates, this project challenges conventional office skyscrapers in terms of spatial experience, structural system, and circulation. The project started with developing a design prototype regardless of the site. This allowed me to raise the most fundamental question, “how should a skyscraper be?” What a typical skyscraper, a type of vertical building, lacks most is vertical connections. Thus, by using paper as a testing medium due to its flexibility and fluidity, I aimed at redesigning an internal arrangement that promotes interconnections within a skyscraper.

Folding The Prototype
After several modular testings, I came up with this modular shell system. By folding 4 pieces of paper, a module that consists of different floor levels is created. Stacking up the modules results in the first prototype of my skyscraper.

Structural Experiment
Initial structural testing was performed to ensure the structure could stand. Opposite shell quarters reinforce each other – the upper part takes the tension force while the lower part is under compression. This model also suggests room of spatial variations. The in-between spaces of the adjacent shell quarters could be transformed into different types of connections or separations between slabs.

Spatial Experiment
The modular shell system was metamorphosed with the addition of intermediate slabs. Different combinations of slabs were tested. The spatial transformation brings about a variety of working conditions and programs. The richness of spaces complies with an activity-based working environment that suggests users could work anywhere in the office that suits his current activity. Spatial fluidity and human mobility are promoted. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Surendar Jayachandran, Jayashree, Achshaya Ramooji
India

Man has been one of the root causes of the deterioration of the globe. The glorious 21 st century has not only paved its way into unimaginable human inventions but has also seen some of the unbearable threats and calamities all over the world. One of the most horrendous events was the 2019-2020 Australian bush fires. Out of the 50,000 many fires, the latest were the most vigorous and deadliest of them all. It took over tens and millions of lives of animals and few human lives as well. It has also forced the evacuation of entire communities.

The ultimate aim of “The ARK” will be focused on to the protection, shelter, restoration, and enrichment of the “flora and fauna” of the flaming fire lands of Australia, or be it any other “fire endangered” forests. Through this scrapper design, there wouldn’t be any more drastic loss of lives, extinction, trauma or tragedy. The ARK is designed to be a self-sustained adaptive being of the jungle. They behave like a native of their space that hosts their mates at times of need and danger. They are so designed to resemble the tall local mountain ash trees (Eucalyptus) of Australia, who happen to possess a tallest growth record of about 80 m. Our ARK stands to a majestic 100 m high with various other nurturing features to the traumatized creatures. In short, this design is an attempt to physically create Mother Nature and her so many qualities as a sky scrapper to the harmless creatures of the woods.

With basic instincts of creation, the animals first run to a place of safety in search of protection. Some survive the run, some injured and many died in this span within the course of which human help arrives which also isn’t practically capable of saving tons and millions stuck, suffering and dead already. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Ziyu Luo, Xiantong Wu, Jingzhe Fan, Peiyu Fu
China

India’s poverty population accounts for about 40% of the world’s. A large number of poor people has left 24% of India’s urban population living in slums. Meanwhile, 1% of the richest Indians own more than half of India’s wealth. Under the extremely unbalanced development of this contradictory society, it can still maintain a long-term “super stable” state relying on the shackles of the caste system and the support of religious culture. However, most of the low castes stagnate in the solidified social status and make a hard living in the slums, which becomes an unavoidable scar in India.

India ranked second in the 2019 Global Retail Development Index and was on the verge of becoming the world’s fifth-largest luxury market. At the same time, as the second-largest labor market except for agriculture, the textile industry played an important role in the sustainable development of the Indian fashion industry, and the survival of textile workers is still the key issue of India’s development.

Relying on the background of Mumbai’s cotton textile industry center, combining with the small-scale handicraft industry workshop foundation in Dharavi and the surrounding financial center’s urban environment, we will build a luxury goods processing and sales building in this largest slum in Asia. Taking the textile industry as the medium, the construction will excavate new and high-end customers for the precious wealth of India’s handmade textile technology, to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, and drive the economic development of Dharavi region. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Masaaki Matsuoka, Yuuki Murakami, Fumito Tamamura, Ryo Watada, Hiroki Kanto
Japan

1. Three-dimensionalization of parks
The 21st Century. As cities become exposed to sophisticated computerization and diversification, they are becoming more complex, in both physical and non-physical aspects. No matter how communication technology may improve, the innovation born of people meeting face to face will be all the more needed. Under these circumstances, the concept of “public” will undergo significant change. The park, which can be seen as a symbol of this, is not just a place of rest for citizens but is also a place of production that provides values to cities in preparation for even greater climate change, food crises, disasters, and other risks that cities face. As a new symbol of such parks, and taking a cue from the obelisks once found around the world, we propose a model for a new public high-rise structure that brings independence and redundancy to cities: the Smart Obelisque. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Anna Kosmala, Anita Tupikowska, Aleksandra Moś
Poland

Recent events from around the world have clearly shown the devastating effects of human activity to date. In response to the fires that consumed vast areas of the Amazon forest and the Australian bush, we have designed a high-rise building to prevent similar ecological disasters in the future. It is intended both to prevent fires, through fast fire detection and immediate intervention, as well as compensate for losses through reforestation and help the affected people and animals.

The shape of the high-rise building was inspired by the cone and the tree. We wanted it to fit into the surroundings and at the same time draw on the idea of sowing seeds – new plants grow around the high-rise building (planted by residents).

We understand that it takes time to put up such a construction, so we propose a system of smaller buildings, which due to prefabricated elements could be built in less than a day. The structure of smaller residential units and the high-rise building consists of capsules attached to a centrally located main communication core, made of reinforced concrete. The skeleton of the capsules is made of prefabricated beams and columns with recycled plastic inside covered with concrete and geo-textile stretched on it. We decided on such construction to avoid littering the environment with plastics and because of their high resistance to damage. In less demanding climates, it would be possible to replace the geo-textile with glass. All installations run under the floor of the capsule and then through the inside of the main core. The capsules are anchored to the core by means of a hanger fixing system. The construction works on burnt-out areas would start with smaller residential units. Some of the residents would be involved in the construction of the central unit, while the rest would repair the damage on the burnt-out area. Read the rest of this entry »

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

German Sandoval Garduño, Ilse Guzmán Heredia
Mexico

Site
The Site for the proposed is a natural basin near Glaciar Torre; on the South of Chile, is a point of convergence between the continents with the most biodiversity loss, of intermediate logistics connection between America, Africa, and Oceania. The site is currently a beautiful snowy mountain landscape ready to house a project of this magnitude and with the ideal temperature for its requirements.

Aim of the project
The aim of the project is to reschedule, protect, and restart animal life to save the design of creation in case of catastrophes or wars. Through preservation techniques, assisted reproduction methods with the support of advanced technologies to reprogram the biodiversity as a reserve over the next several decades. Read the rest of this entry »