Growing with stringy tentacles off of typical, rectangular high-rise towers is the Sky Cloud, a skyscraper that winds and grows from the ground into a twisting structure that resembles, at the top, an aquatic tail or fin.

The Sky Cloud design, by New Jersey and New York-based architects and designers Patricia Sabater, Christopher Booth and Aditya Chauan, presents a building whose skin and shape are “experimentations of deformation with portals and cellular growth.”  The portals feed the exotic needs of the future: gateways at the skyscraper’s peak allow for arrival and departures of sky taxis and a sky rail system. The building’s cells house a variety of functions, from apartments and hotel rooms to corporate meeting space, a “sky lounge” and a museum of economic crisis. The structure will also feature a park and a resource co-op.

The replicable design is meant to “”sprout in economically and infrastructurally prolific regions,” bringing the latest in impressive amenities and technologies to these wealthy cities. It was designed on a “node-based growth pattern.” Plans specify a 38 percent core-to-skin “dispersion,” which is the amount of space allowed for the development of the residential and entertainment facilities listed above.

The massive structure extends its lower half like a dripping wax candle over traditionally shaped buildings, and provides load dispersion through “an innovative monocoque growth system.” Finally, this futuristic design generates energy: its skin is largely made of patterned polymer panels to collect the sun’s rays.

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