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.

The building is divided into three parts: in the upper space, a shopping complex will be built; the lower part is a luxury goods processing factory, where the working and living space in parallel, to maintain the original high-density pace of life; religious belief in the middle provides spiritual ties for the two sides to maintain harmony and stability. The spiral from bottom to the top of the building symbolizes struggle, fairness, and hope. We provide better working, education and living environment for low caste people, while through their own struggle, the low caste people will get better living conditions and keep seeing the hope of life. The outer “up to the sky” tramcar can provide the rich with a better luxury shopping experience, or a purely peaceful prayer journey.

We hope that those who are eager to accumulate wealth and those who are treated unfairly by the caste system can all enter here —— a gate of the spiritual world that is free from external interference, harmonious and inclusive. In this symbiotic system of rich and poor, some people can understand the meaning of struggle and feel the joy of success and the power of hope; some can fully demonstrate their wealth power and get a better consumption experience; and everyone —— in a fair way, continues to feel the power of national faith. As a symbol of economic development and an incubator of talents and strength, the skyscraper will become a monument of an economic leap, and gradually transform the urban scar into a special economic zone.

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