Editors’ Choice
2023 Skyscraper Competition
Runze Wu, Jingkun Sun, Jingyi Liang, Liying Yang, Yizhuo Dai, Pengyu Chen
China
Itaewon is a famous local business district and a bar street in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea, which is usually very popular on weekends. on the night of October 29, 2022，More than 150 people died in a mass stampede at Itaewon，Local media said it was the largest number of people killed in an accident in South Korea since the sinking of the passenger ship “Shiyue” in 2014.The night of the accident, Itaewon held a Halloween party, the number of people gathered nearby was approximately 100,000 people, the accident occurred in a long narrow ramp, and the injured were mostly young people. Among the people who died, except for a few in the front row who were trampled to death, more were crushed in the chest could not breathe, and eventually died of traumatic asphyxiation.
At the time of the accident, the whole alley was crowded with people, the part where the stampede occurred was a section approximately 5.7 meters long, and more than 300 people were packed in a space of approximately 18 square meters.The lack of response before the incident and the lack of effective limitations on the number of people, as well as the lack of guidance at the time of the incident, which led to the crowd getting together and not being able to find the direction of evacuation, are some of the important reasons for the stampede in Korea. Even though the subsequent Korean police and rescue forces arrived at the scene in large numbers after the stampede, the rescue forces were crowded at the periphery, because the huge crowd was difficult to evacuate quickly and could not implement effective rescue for the first time.For us, the most important thing is to learn from the mistakes and eliminate the hidden dangers. After all, urban governance is not just about how many high-rise buildings are built, but also about how to make people feel safer.
The design is inspired by the Ferris wheel, which functions as an entertainment and first aid device inserted vertically in the center of dense urban traffic. The building acts as an entertainment device during the normal period, providing more views within the city, enriching people’s lives and enhancing their living experience. In the event of a trampling accident, the building will be transformed into a first-aid device to transport people from the place of danger to the safe place through the Ferris wheel. The Itaewon trampling accident was a safety problem caused by people’s excessive entertainment, and we use an entertainment device as a solution to its similar problem, hoping to stand as a landmark in the city, reminding people to pay attention to safety and cherish life even when they are partying.
The design is located in the center of Itaewon in Korea, because the accident is strongly representative, and the site of Itaewon is representative. We analyzed the Itaewon stampede by modeling the crowd flow as a fluctuating model with mathematical concepts based on three states:, critical, preburst, and occurrence, and analyzing parameters such as crowd speed, accident area, degree of autonomous drive, and accident time. We finally determined the size of the urban space that needed to be safely evacuated in case of an accident and selected the exact site of the skyscraper.
