Honorable Mention
2022 Skyscraper Competition

Han-Yu Lai, Wei-Qun Cai, Chun-Yi Yeh
Taiwan

In 2008 the FAO reported that 20% of all cultivated areas, 30% of forests, and 10% of grasslands are degrading. 52% of the land used for agriculture is moderately or severely affected by soil degradation and 12 million hectares of once productive land are lost to desertification per annum. Nearly 1.5 billion people depend directly on degrading land for their livelihoods, most of them in the so-called ‘developing world’. Land degradation leads to food insecurity which can, in turn, lead to conflict, migration, and inevitably, the loss of biodiversity. Less tangible, but no less significant is that the process of degradation not only erodes the land, it also corrodes the spirit of communities watching their homelands turn into a wasteland.

Desertification is the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems by variations in climate and human activities. These drylands are home to over a third of the entire human population and they occupy nearly half of Earth’s land area. Some 10 to 20% of drylands are already degraded, and ongoing desertification threatens the world’s poorest populations and the prospects of poverty reduction. Therefore, desertification is one of the greatest environmental challenges today and a major barrier to meeting basic human needs in drylands.

Climate change and human overexploitation have led to a growing problem of desertification and land degradation. Oasis’s attempt to prevent direct contact between sand and dust from planting grounds by blocking dust from sandstorms in the desert has been prevented. The water is stored using an air filter converter in the center of the tower, and the water is distributed equally to the land by controlling a central control room at the top of the tower. Because desert areas have unstable climates and rapid environmental changes, Oasis changes according to different climatic conditions. The air and water filtration system will achieve the best benefits through contraction and linkage, and ultimately achieve the purpose of environmental restoration.

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