Instant Skyscraper

By:  | November - 11 - 2020

Editors’ Choice
2020 Skyscraper Competition

Fanbo Zeng, Jianhua Lei, Bisheng Hong, Zhaoshan Huang, Yi Zhu, Yushan Xie
China

WHAT IF A LARGE BUILDING COULD BE CREATED IN SECONDS?
With the development of society, the requirement of architecture is getting higher. Human beings pursue faster construction, larger building scale, and more diverse space. When the technology develops to a certain level, how can architecture form on a larger scale with complex spaces in lesser time? The proposal assumes that in the future, large-scale buildings can be triggered by long-range missiles. In such a process, a large number of materials solidify to form a series of spaces spontaneously. The project aims for a manifesto of a megastructure by the explosion with three main characteristics.

SPEED
The pursuit of speed is the instinct of human beings. In the near future, the human would develop a faster construction technique to meet the needs of a larger amount of buildings.

From the hunting activities of primitive humans, speed has become the goal of pursuit.  In modern society, faster speed means more efficiency and productivity. Therefore, the pursuit of speed has long been human genetic inertia.

Humans are also pursuing speed in building construction with the continuous innovation of construction technology. This proposal is about utilizing an explosion to create a large amount of space, so as to meet the human needs for minimizing construction time in the future. The earliest construction technology started with masonry, which took a long time, such as 30 years building the pyramid. In the 27 BC, the invention of early concrete material made the construction time of Roman Pantheon reduce to 11 years. In the 19th century, it took only 5 years to build the Chrysler Building in NYC with modern concrete. In the 21st century, it only took the Shanghai World Financial Center 3 years and nArchitects’ Carmel Place used less than 1 year to build. The speed of building construction is the first theme of this proposal.

EXPANSION
Looking back at the development of architecture in history, it has shown a trend of expansion for greater scale in architecture.

Eventually, there is a tendency to become an urbanized building. The concept of urbanized architecture is mentioned in Rem Koolhaas’s Dialogue with Students: Architecture is not only the building itself but urban species. The increasingly high-density urbanization development makes various kinds of interaction take place inside a building. The interaction stimulates innovation and enables new spatial forms and programs. To achieve such a complex interaction of spaces, the building itself needs to be sufficiently “big”. When the scale of the building is large enough, it provides new possibilities and space for complex urban life.

Therefore, this proposal envisages the creation of a sufficiently large building mass through a  large explosion. In such a large-scale building, more complex and diverse activities of human society can occur.

EMERGENCE
Explosion generates a large number of spaces with complexity.

Unlike traditional methods, construction by the explosion is completely independent of man’s will. The explosion process will be affected by many factors, such as temperature, pressure, airflow, rainfall, terrain, etc.

Under the effects of many influencing factors, the building outcomes are full of unpredictable, non-linear and ambiguous spaces. The architecture forming process is from small units to large ones, from simple to complex. Tons of simple and uniform individual spaces, under the control of a few rules, produce an intricate systems, which is uncertain and dynamic. The complexity of the system provides a basis for the complexity and diversity of urban life.

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