Honorable Mention
Trans-Pital: Space Adaptive
Skyscraper Hospital
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Chen Linag, Jia Tongyu, Sun Bo, Wang Qun, Zhang Kai, Choi Minhye
China
The medical and health organization of a country
includes the country’s security and improves the health of the people, the
treatment of diseases and injuries of persons, organizations, systems and
processes. The hospital plays a very important role in the system. However, the
world is generally encountered in the case of lack of hospitals to serve the
patients, at the same time, the chaos of the hospital
streamline is not convenient for patients to use.
A space and tectonic responsive hospital is easy to
assemble and reflects the society. It shows the BMI from the morphology of
itself. Morphological changes can be suitable for various terrain environments,
at the same time according to the functional requirements to change in
morphology.
The medical building tries to solve the medical
problems, so that the building can reflect the urban living conditions of the
urban human settlements directly. The building collected within 10 km radius of
the residents’ health data, which is reflected from the building surfaces
directly, and the internal function (inpatient, emergency treatment, medical
technology, and the outpatient which contains 50
departments) consistently.
Patients arrive at the hospital, and enter the core
tube directly to the emergency treatment and the outpatient departments
directly. The patients who need the in-patient treatment will transfer to the
wards. The idea of the hospital is that the patient does not have to move by
himself, according to the motion track, the wards can move to where it should
go to, like the outpatient space for further consultation with a doctor
instead. However, if there are not too many patients of any department, the
space for the outpatient and in-patient will be folded
to form a therapy garden space.
The whole building is divided into a frame, a core
tube structure, a large assembled body, which is an independent department
module, and a small mobile body which is a medical
cubic module inside the large assembled body.
Technology
The small medical cubic module could move on the track in and among the large
assembled bodies to form the body of the independent department.
Driving device
It is the mechanism that drives the actuator to move,
according to the command signal sent by the control system, the module moves
with the aid of the power element. It is the input of the electrical signal,
the output of the line and the angular displacement.
Detecting device
It is a real-time detection of movement and work,
according to the need to feed back to the control system, and sets the
information after the comparison, the implementation of the organization to
adjust, to ensure that the action is in accordance with the requirements of the
scheduled.
Control system
One is centralized control, which is the total
mechanical control by a microcomputer to complete. The other is decentralized
(level) control, which uses multiple computers to share the control. Read the rest of this entry »
Biomorph Skyscraper: Atmosphere Of The
Place
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Jayong Shim, Dailong Ma, Tai Feng
United States
New York City is a city of large high-density
buildings that sets a trend for people’s life and goals. A
lot of people are still trying to come to the city with a utopian dream.
However, at same time, people are running out of town because of they struggle
with urban life causing little social diversity. There are countless
skyscrapers in NYC but people cannot recognize existence of the places because
the buildings don’t have specific features.
A definition of a place is a particular portion of
space, whether of definite or indefinite extent. However, in the building, the
space is not limited by the fundamental dimensions of
“place”. The place is a space people can feel the existence and specific
emotion. The morphosis design of organic creature
integrates diverse experience that blurs the boundary between spatial
relationships. The space uses the city’s landscape as a background, and façade
as an experimental symbol, which is stunning the society and evoking people
thought to explore more value of the community. Spatial atmosphere also creates
an opportunity to experience some special interior phenomenon and moment which
people may get inspired and surprised. It can be considered
as a chance to provoke people’s passion about aesthetic urban life and turn
those passions into a diverse way of thinking.
In the façade, morphosis
design of organic creature makes many different diffuse light qualities, which
can produce various interior atmospheres. When people experience the space, the
bright light lead and gather people who are losing way from dark area, then the
dark zone attracts people who are holding a strong curiosity. The contrast of
small-scale rooms and large-scale atriums gives people various spatial
inspirations on the difference of urban scale.
The entire project does not only synthesize the
fundamental function with morphology of the building design, but also consider
large-scale urban environment as an experimental field to explore and provoke
people’s diversity.
Air-Stalagmite: A Skyscraper To
Serve As A Beacon And Air Filter For Polluted Cities
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Changsoo Park, Sizhe Chen
United States
Air-Stalagmite is a high-rise designed to emerge in
the most polluted areas in the world. This project recognized the environmental
problems originated after the Industrial and Technological Revolutions – two
centuries of a very high consumption of natural resources around the globe.
This skyscraper serves two functions. First as a beacon that acknowledges an extremely high pollution
problem. Second, it is designed to filter contaminated
air and capture suspended air particles. A gigantic vacuum placed at the bottom
of the building sucks polluted air to be cleaned by a
series of air filters located on the higher levels. The particles are then
accumulated and used as building material to further
construct the skyscraper. Each filament on the building’s façade
represents a year – a similar concept to tree trunk rings. Read the rest of this entry »
Cloud Craft: Rainmaking Skyscraper
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Michael Militello, Amar
Shah
United States
Droughts are a recurring feature of California’s
climate, and the current four-year period starting from the fall of 2011 has
been the driest in history since recordkeeping began in 1895. California is in
fact the world’s fifth-largest supplier of food and most of the farming depends
on irrigation, which usually accounts for about 80% of the state’s human water
use. In 2014 growers lost about 6.6 million acre-feet
of surface water and 2.2 billion dollars because of the drought.
California, much like the rest of the planet, is in
dire need of immediate rain and snowfall; long-term water conservation and
storage strategies for the future; and responsible architectural designs that
incorporate innovative technologies to help preserve the earth’s environment,
before it is too late.
Looking to the sky can be a solution. Cloud seeding
has been around for many decades and used throughout the world in various
strategies. China used cloud seeding in Beijing just before the 2008 Olympic
Games in order to clear the air of pollution. Farmers in the midwestern United States shoot flares of silver iodide out
of planes to help spur rainfall in that region. It is more
and more becoming a popular weather modification tool to help combat
drought, famine, pollution, solar radiation, etc.
Clouds contain super-cooled liquid water vapor. A
rainstorm happens after moisture collects around naturally occurring particles
in the air, causing the air to reach a level of saturation at which point it
can no longer hold in that moisture. The process of cloud seeding essentially
provides additional “nuclei” around which water vapor molecules condense in the
cloud. These nuclei can be salts, dry ice, or silver iodide, which are all
effective because their crystalline structural forms are similar to that of
ice. The water vapor molecules combine with the added crystals to induce
freezing nucleation, resulting in larger heavier water droplets and eventual
precipitation.
The architectural concept imagines a future earth
where cloud seeding has become the standard process to modify and manipulate
the weather. Cloud seeding can result in many positive environmental outcomes
including temperature control, flooding prevention, decreasing pollution,
dispersing fog, and deflecting solar radiation. But
for the purposes of California, it is mainly used for irrigation and rainfall
to combat droughts and famine.
Towers are erected near the coast so as the lower
marine layer clouds pass overhead, they can be seeded at different times and
intervals, causing precipitation to occur in as little as 10 minutes. After
years of practice, scientists have been able to pinpoint the exact amount and
timing of release of chemical mixtures in order to manipulate the path of a
cloud after seeding and predict where the rainfall will occur. Thus, rainfall is dispersed or “doled out” to cities and towns further inland that
are suffering from drought.
The towers themselves take on the aesthetics of a
tree. Great limbs stretch to the sky; cloud farms grow like fungi off these
limbs. The upper levels of the tower act as a self-sustaining community – the
cloud seeders jettison the salt + iodide mixture into the air forcing the
clouds to precipitate. The cable netting catches the rainfall and syphons it
down to irrigate the farms. And the farms in turn provide
food for the community. Residential flats line the cloud pythons, housing the
farmers and workers of the tower. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Nathakit Sae-Tan, Prapatsorn
Sukkaset
Thailand
This is an imaginary future, where resources of
nature have been used and reclaimed exhaustively by the greed
of man to the point of irreversible damage. Spanning across the
landscape by human intervention, until there is no more nature left for the
upcoming generations to see. In those days where the impermanence of concrete can not withstand the true forces
of nature, the solid ground is soon to be covered by earth, minerals and
eventually the green, growing on top are the woods that would stem deep and
span miles and miles, beyond the imagination of mankind. We build these super structures that would spread throughout the
city, as if they were grains of seeds that would uncontrollably grow, taking
back what was once theirs.
When the forces of nature is too strong for men to
resist, we would have to learn how to cope with nature in order to co-exist
with the earth, occupying less surface on ground as much as possible, tall
vertical super structure is the proposed solution. The Babel skyscraper can
accommodate food security and living space for both nature and human. To
achieve this, the architecture is designed with a
concept of the emergence twisting parametric mountain, seamlessly flow with the
geometric skyscraper. The building is designed with
only floors to provide the vertical spaces; with open plan and inside void,
providing ventilation.
The Babel skyscraper is located in many sites
around Bangkok. People visiting and living there will once again experience the
natural habitat; bringing back the intimate bond we
once have being so close to nature. The homogenizing of concrete landscape had
us forgotten our relationship with nature. This future is to re-imagine these
connections and visualize them. This connection would also form a more intimate
symbiotic relationship between nature and humans.
During the first phases, the architecture only
contains the mountain-shaped base and vertical columns, which would eventually
grow into an Eden, a relaxing park and food bank, for the organic vegetables
and rice. The architecture itself is time-based and would change dramatically
through the years. And in the times where human can no
longer walk the earth, this skyscraper is where humans can depend on as
inhabitants, traveling up and down by drones, a technology of the future, which
we foresee.
We’ve planned many possible locations for this this skyscraper in order to
spread the green effectively throughout Bangkok, Thailand. Neglecting the
living of man and let nature flow through every street and avenue of the city,
eating up the main vessel and eventually the heart of the what we see as
places, until there is nothing left for man to stand and looking back at what
we’ve done to the earth.
This set of skyscrapers would be a symbol for the
cruelty we’ve done to nature, and what we have to pay
back; including how human should adapt in order to survive.
The design is something that may or may not have
happened in a world beyond our imagination, and the architecture not as we
recognize today, but as seeds that that takes us back to the past where nature
rule the earth and where man are but just another creature that walk the
planet. Nature here plays a crucial role in the establishment of the
architecture, unlike the ones we see nowadays, being changed and adapted,
according to the use of man.
Here, we design skyscrapers, with nature as the
main user and human as parasites of the planet, struggling to survive and
camouflage, living towards the very end of the race. Read the rest of this entry »
Sustainable Skyscraper Enclosure
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Soomin Kim, Seo-Hyun Oh
South Korea
Modern cities have faced extreme changes due to
developments of the Industrial Revolution and the urban sprawl caused by
population increase. Artificial environment, cities, offered diversity of
opportunities and new lifestyles which humans
comforted with. However, this benefit jeopardized the balance and harmony of
natural environment. Capitalism, while making possible these megacities, also
brought severe side effects such as economic polarization and social imbalance.
Once expected to guarantee prosperity of human lives, technics and systems, are now even considered as threats to the coexistence
between human and natural environment, and human communities.
Architecture of the past reflected the overheated
technologies in competition of developments and selfish gain of capital.
However, as the question of coexistence and balance is brought
to the surface nowadays, how will the generation’s idea change this selfish
gain and what kind of form will modern architecture will take as its phenotype?
Today, 54% of the world population live urban based lives, megacities of
population over 10 million keep increasing. Skyscrapers were born from the
necessity to disperse dense complexity of horizontal cities by vertically
expanding and reconstructing, in order to make a more effective use of scarce
land. Moreover, many cities passionately competed in building more skyscrapers
since they were often taken as outcomes of their
economic success.
State of the art technology and highly concentrated
capital turned New York into city of skyscrapers. The Empire State, completed
in 1930 becoming the world’s highest man-made structure, was
imprinted into the mind of people as the symbol of prosperity and a
great leap towards success. This piece of architecture visualized the harsh
competing nature of capitalism itself, which is the driving force of the idea.
Simultaneously, making scenery that even shows the severe polarization of
capital, shabby slum streets of the city in contrast to the world’s tallest
building.
The urban areas in earth, which just account for
just 1% of the Earth surface, uses 75% of the total energy, and responsible for
80% of green gas emission. It was found that NYC,
which developed into the first megacity to have population more than 10 million
in 1950, uses the most excessive energy and resources amongst all the
megacities. UN predicts that by 2050, the world population will go over 9
billion. Cities will be overcrowded in due to accept
this change in population, which makes experts believe that demand for
skyscrapers will continue to increase. However, these demands are in
contradiction with the social and environmental problems that could be caused if the megacities like NYC continue to spend
energy and resources at this rate. Thus, to satisfy these demands, we need to
have a sustainable model for a skyscraper.
If skyscrapers in the 20th Century followed the
logic of development and growth, the new model should be following the law of
recovery and coexistence. Currently most of the NYC’s areas are already in use,
and it would take a great deal of energy and resources to try starting over entirely.
The model will use conventional buildings as resources, and it will find a new
usage for them and give them purposes for the future using only the slightest
efforts on building acts. The newly born buildings will use and self-produce
eco-friendly energy in sustainable cycle, so that they can co-exist with the
environment instead of opposing it. With the model, the capitals will have a
new frontier in front of them as they implement shared values within the
public, and the skyscrapers, once a symbol of polarization of capital and
public, will make a transition to a symbol of co-existence. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Eric Randall Morris, Galo Canizares
United States
Located north of Tindouf,
Algeria, the Valley of the Giants is the largest oasis in Northern Africa.
However, this was not always the case. In the early 21st century, the area was
mostly dust. Water was scarce, and the only inhabitants were nomadic tribes
like the Tuareg people. As global conflicts grew and
their impact rippled over several continents, demand for refugee housing and
temporary settlements increased in the area. Frustrated, the country’s
government decided that they needed to build something;
a permanent solution to the temporal problems which kept piling up. They needed
something that addressed the influx of immigrants, the desertification of the
area, and changing cultural diversity; something beyond a quick-fix.
Architecture was the solution. But not a
contingency plan; rather, a catalyst. The proposal was not to build temporary
shelters or redesign a city from scratch, but instead to use infrastructure and
ecology to jumpstart and augment already existing environmental and cultural
systems. The concept was simple: a series of towers that would (1) house
plant-spores, (2) produce, collect, and treat water,
and (3) pollinate the surrounding landscape, catalyzing the production of an
oasis in the region. The structures themselves had to be of an immense scale in
order to effect significant change; thus they were
designed as 1km tall, thin, cylinders. In addition to their independent
functions, a new network of underground pipes was implemented
to facilitate the creation of pools and wells. Within 20 years, the area would
drastically transform from a barren landscape into the Valley of the Giants.
Today it is home to both permanent residents and
traveling nomads. The oasis extends far to the base of the Anti
Atlas Mountains in Morocco, and south to the city of Tindouf.
The new urban development is a mixture of traditional Tuareg
tents, permanent clay huts, and contemporary dwellings. Politics and social
life have their ups and downs, but there hasn’t been a
major conflict in the area since the time before the Giants. The structures
themselves are still functional. They tower over the villages like keepers of
the land. Some communities have even invented their own stories of how the
Giants came, suggesting a new mythology and awareness of these mysterious
structures. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Paolo Venturella, Cosimo Scotucci
Italy
Our planet is going through the irreversible process
of global warming, and even if various strategies have been
planned to solve the problem, none of them provided a solution. This is
causing natural disasters all over the planet. The temperature all around the
planet is increasing making the ice in the pole melt. Only a “global strategy” can be adopted.
To cool down the temperature a huge greenhouse is placed in between the sun and us. This works according
the same principle of the “solar tower”. Thanks to the accumulation of heat in
the glazed structure, air flows naturally from hot to cold generating rapid and
strong flows. These flows bring hot air far from the Earth cooling down the
temperature of the whole globe. The airflows restore better climate conditions and moreover generate renewable energies by wind turbines
placed inside the structures. The structure acts either on climate conditions
or on energy production.
Furthermore this structure creates an amazing and surprising effect. Since it has
to solve a problem for the entire planet, its dimension is
over scaled. It has to be a unique and continuous structure, placed in a
single point, and cantilever on both sides. It results as a tangent object on
the planet. It touches the ground in a unique point, and for this reason it is perceived in different ways from different
parts of the world. On the Equator it looks a
horizontal element while from the poles it looks a vertical one. The impressive
structure allows solving a critical question and works maintaining perfect
climate conditions and providing clean energy for all. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Joseph Konrad Kosmas Schneider, Vincent Johann
Moller
Germany
The 22nd Century – Humankind succeeded in avoiding
the dangers of the 21st century’s Technological Singularity. Through great
efforts and extensive preparation the crucial moment
of the awakening of a self-improving Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) could
be predicted and controlled. Mankind was able to stay
the most powerful yet not the most intelligent species on the planet while ASI
became its god-like slave – forever bound to serve humanity in its needs.
Induced by ASI, unimaginable, all-embracing
progress throughout the entire research was achieved,
lifting the human state of knowledge to uncharted heights.
Step by step the human biological body was technically modified. Biological
evolution merged with technology. Human communication changed into the medium
of electromagnetic radiation, eventually the human
mind was transcended into technical units and merged with ASI. A total
integration happened. The human body was, through the immortality of its
digital mind, eventually made redundant. Although physical reality is the basis
of everything, being in it became obsolete. The shift of human reality from the
physical to the digital world was completed.
The appearance of this digital world is beyond our
current understanding of time and space – its only dimension is the speed of
communication, the speed of data transfer. Cartesian locations loose their importance. The digital world is not a world of
movement – it is a world of calling up.
Since being in this digital world differs entirely
from human’s former nature, a new desire towards the physical reality arose at
a certain point. Just like humanist artists used to
depict the ideal ancient landscape of Arcadia in their paintings, mankind made
the physical world into their world of NEW ARCADIA. For reasons of nostalgia
human minds would then materialize into a favored biological body to experience
this physical world`s truth.
The Tower of New Arcadia situates everything that
used to constitute human life. It defines a place where people can meet and
enjoy the beauty of physical world’s sensations.
A place of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. A
place of pristine human interaction and feeling. To stroll our so called Real World. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Alexandr Pincov, Heng Chang
Moldova, China
Modernization and globalization symbolize human
advancement in the 21st Century, but life in big “modern” cities is extremely
pale, focusing only on work. Modernization, despite of all the conveniences it
brings, it also devours people’s feelings, sensory information and emotions-
the key ingredients of life.
The Sensory Skyscraper was
conceived for on an island in the Yangtze River in the Chongqing
Municipality, China. Landform, environment and climate deprive the local
society of perceptual experiences. This project is a multifunctional laboratory
of scientific exploration on human senses, perceptions, rehabilitation of
sensory information, rehabilitation of experience effects, and rehabilitation
of motivations and expectations etc.
This laboratory is a cube that consists of 6 pyramids with a side length of 100m. The shape of pyramid
derives from a perception pyramid figure. The combination of 6
pyramids mirrors the way human brain works, different cortex processing
different senses. Seen from outside, each pyramid has specific patterns which
show the functional sectors inside. Every sector represents an open space for
different types of perceptions and senses. Five magnetic flexible pillars
support the cubes. The corridor system inside the pyramid links all units
together vertically and horizontally.
The pyramids can be parted
and move vertically since the cubic shape is control by magnetic power. With
the coverage height of the magnetic power 600m and 100m lateral of pillars, the
mobility of pyramids is completely secured. Magnetic
power is invisible; so that the project looks like it is floating in the air the magnetic power is strictly controlled without
harming nearby environment. The main entrance is at the bottom of the pyramid
that has an elevation of 10m above the ground, so the only method to get in or
out is through a magnetic floating vessel. The island is
divided in modules of 20x20m for different purposes including 5 modules
for supporting the cube itself, modules for floating vessels, storage, office,
parks, shopping malls etc., making the island as multifunctional as the cube. Also the project can make full use of the island in this way.
Down the riverbed are several pillars, which can rise to protect the island and
buildings on it from water in wet season while fall to keep close to the water
surface in dry season.
Once human beings regain their sensory perceptions
they can better understand their origins, potentials, and natural environment,
thus get rid of the downside of modernization and enjoy their life. Read the
rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Lu Te Hsin
Taiwan
If there is a need for a monument in this city, let
there be one. This monument will become a slice of the contemporary world, and
the ideology of citizens will be revealed with a
massive collage of culture symbols.
Taipei is a great city where people of different
classes from different countries are living. Mysterious games are played by everyone, while the winners accumulate huge
capitals and others lose everything they have. Some people are born to win
while others never have a chance. With population
rising and more foreign culture are imported to the city, the game will be
played by more people with frenzy pace.
The Dutch, the Spanish, the Chinese and the
Japanese people in modern history have colonized Taiwan. A diverse political
and cultural heritage has rendered Taiwan a country without clear root or
origin. Taiwan thus becomes a blender that accepts most influences from other
cultures. The mixture also represents in the build environment. Taiwan has find
ways to incorporate different cultural aspects, whether traditional or modern,
western or eastern. Like all other colonized cities, the urban scape is an
agglomeration of different influences and developments.
To represent the city and its people, the
government started a project to create a monument that is also a tremendous
housing. Having no more land to use in the already crowded city, the only way
to go is up. A colossal height is expected, and the design becomes a task of
vertical urban-planning.
A megastructure in architecture as well as a
superstructure in the sense of Marx theories, this monument / housing complex
is an embodiment of economy, culture and society.
The infrastructure of the architecture is designed to allow various builders to construct different
buildings within the tower for different needs. Huge elevators are erected to provide vertical transportation. While
wealthy people purchase luxury high level residences, the lower levels and the
ground floor becomes a slum that is not that different to the surrounded urban
areas: chaotic and immense. The Tower becomes not only a monument for the city,
but a representation of the city itself.
Seven Phases of Tower Building
1. A superstructure starts to develop under the supervision of the government.
Verticality is a strategy to densify the use of space.
2. Real estate dealers start to advertise on the “tallest dwelling in the
world”. Lured by the view and the sunlight accompanied with the height, buyers flock
toward the mid- and upper sections of the tower.
3. As the tower continues to grow, people starts to move in. Newcomers
gradually find that the tower is self-supplied.
4. A huge amount of labor force is needed to sustain
the tower. The lower levels are open for workers to move in.
5. The possibility of lower level residents working their way up to the upper
level threatens the stability of the power structure. A separate management is established for the lower levels to cut away connections
with the top. Two dividing zones are established: an
industry belt and a green belt.
6. The capacity and influence of tower expands rapidly. The difference between
the three sections deepens. The lower levels fall into a slum condition while
the top floors become more luxurious, and the middle-class working people
caught in between spend much effort to keep up.
7. The infrastructure of the tower keeps expanding, as if the tower would never
reach a limit. As the diversity within the tower grows, the cultural and visual
identity of the tower becomes harder to describe. The Tower becomes
everything. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Alessandro Arcangeli,
Filippo Fiorani
The Netherlands
Core Issue
Modern capitalism has been the 20th Century’s religion, and finance is its
product. This system created utter inequality, the final stage of class
struggle, where 1% of the population controls more than 40% of world’s wealth.
Growing inequality is the flip side of something else:
shrinking opportunity.
Whenever we
diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our
most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. In 2008 financial capitalism collapsed. This collapse aroused
the crowds, breathing life into a new political and economical
approach, which we call Socialism 2.0. The upcoming neo-socialist economy
requires a collective action, it is based on the
certainty that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest-in other
words, the common welfare-is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate
well-being. The Architectural product of the XX century was the Skyscraper, and
its mania for reaching the sky. The Skyscraper is the XX century’s Babel tower,
where people only work, speaking different languages, distancing themselves
from the city and from other people.
Our Position
Assuming that every spatial choice is political, and every political choice is
spatial, we want to reverse the idea of the skyscraper, giving back the tower
to the public. Most of the hybrid buildings we know failed, resulting in
structures where different functions and spaces just stand in top or in front
of each other, without interacting. We tried to create a space where functions
and spaces interact, rather than co-exist, basing our design on the distinction
that Aristotelis first, than Hannah Arendt, made,
between the two verbs act and work.
A space where people act rather than work. Action
goes on directly between men, corresponding to the human condition of
plurality, to the fact that men, not man, live the earth. Plurality and
connectivity are the natural conditions of Agorà.
Architectural Manifestation
We take the street and we flip it, arranging in
vertical all the spaces we walk through when we go for a stroll in town. We
base our design on the connection within public and private spaces.
The former will be distributed along the three
dimensions of the tower, the latter will be literally re-invented: a new
flexible working space, based on interactions between spaces and people, where
sharing is the keyword: sharing services, workforce, ideas. From the city of
Madrid, we access the tower arising on the new Spanish parliament, where the
community decides for itself in a new form of free and collaborative democracy.
From this political theatre we walk up to two squares
that introduce the working spaces. Six modules of three floors, for different
needs.
These spaces stand on a structural steel grid along
which tools such as chairs, printers, tables, panels, slide, being accessible
by everyone. This space is conceived for young workers, startuppers,
students, who have the possibility to rent a just a
cheap table, enjoying the possibility of sharing the cost of common services
and more important: to meet other people, potential collaborators and
teammates. If we keep climbing the tower we end up in
the library, conceived as an ascent on big steps to the rooftop. In the
boarding spaces we found the hologram rooms, where
people can experience through holograms, and 3d projections the spaces
descriptor in the good old books. On top of the tower
we find what called the labyrinth: a space where people lose themselves and
meet inside this monumental labyrinth of monoliths scattered on the square.
The whole building is conceived
as a spiritual and social path, running from the crowded arena, to the
spiritual, intimate, religious labyrinth.Read the rest of
this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Abolhassan Karimi, Amir Khosravi,
Soudabeh Abbasi Azar, Shima Khoshpasand, Fatemeh Salehi Amiri, Maryam Nademi, Neshat Mirhadizadi
Iran
A major destructive earthquake is
predicted to shake the city of Tehran in the near future. To mitigate
the damage from such earthquakes it is necessary to find relevant risk factors
of Tehran by assessing the social and urban response to such catastrophes.
Our proposal for a safe and temporary infrastructure
in the event of an earthquake consists of a network of urban links that lead to
central core or “stackable” shelter pockets. We have strategically selected the
Deh-Vanak area of Tehran as our scenario location due
to its high urban density of buildings at high risk of collapsing and its lack
of open public spaces.
In the event of such earthquake, our project
proposes a network of infrastructure and vertical safety nods acting as
temporary central cities that will safely mobilize and shelter the local
community.
The proposed central safety nods are
based on the antisismic properties of and
consist of clusters of sliding sphere geometries. Mixed use
clusters that cover basic needs are allocated around a core public space and
key transportation nods. These nods are capable of serving as shelter by
aggregating the mobile sphere units that navigate the network.
Network
The proposed network in Deh-Vanak analyses threats
and opportunities of the site and efficient trajectories not only at pedestrian
level and but also along clearances of low rise and mid-rise buildings.
Through this analysis we
are able to deploy minimal infrastructure to reach safety and optimize the
number and location of these central safety nods.
Sphere Geometry
The geometry of the sphere allows the minimum friction and the maximum freedom
of movement hence minimizing structural tension during the repercussions that
follow in the aftermath of an earthquake.
A selection of spheres are fixed to compose central
pockets that serve as public spaces while other spheres characterized by their
double shell act as mobile units to host diverse functions from information
points to first aid checkpoints to food and clean water distribution centers.
The shells of these mobile spheres have the capacity to ensemble into emergent
shelters.
Supporting infrastructure such as water and waste
canals feed along main links into the core public space and key stations.
Connectivity between spheres in shelter pockets is possible through connecting
joints. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Jie Liu, Wen Sun, Hewen Suo
Canada
Research has shown that crime has closely related
to personality disorders. Conventional correction center usually conveys a
feeling of suffering for the inmates. Limited sunlight and tight space has
negative psychological impact on the inmates. Personality disorder tends to be
aggravated in the custody process, rendering the inmates difficult to
effectively reform or being corrected. Healing Matrix
is trying to break the ordinary design of a correction center; it is attempting
to address this social issue from an architectural perspective.
In this building, newly defined healing
cluster-space has replaced the traditional detention space to facilitate the
healing of personality disorders, and meet the needs of inmates in different
stages of the healing process. During the entire sentence, under the
arrangement by the Command Centre of the building, inmates will interact with
each other according to their instant need. Inmates will also be able to look
inside to discover their inner spirit and interact with the architectural space
itself, through a multi-layer treatment approach, therefore fundamentally cure
the personality disorder and achieve the goal of complete healing.
To achieve crime prevention and psychological and
cognitive rehabilitation, other than the setup of a conventional correction
center, six independent yet related types of spaces are
created here. Each space has its own function and approach towards
self-healing and self-correction. Each space is a cluster of several cubes.
Different needs of inmates with distinct personalities are
addressed here. Spaces are divided as such: Praying Space (religion
support), Meditation Space (the power of inner peace), Accompaniment Space
(interpersonal interactions and support), Anger/Depression Management Space
(cognitive behavioral therapy), and Social Training Space (communication and
soft skill polishing)
Each inmate has his/her own independent space (each
space is a cube with dimension of 3m*3m*3m). Inmates’ life and privacy are
appropriately respected and protected. Inmates’ instant need is
transmitted through feeling receptors to the Command Centre of the
Building. The matrix network would then automatically match and transfer the
inmate to a “best fit” space to optimize the healing effect. In order to ensure
the free multi-directional movement each unit, the building itself has an inner
matrix space, which allows for three-dimensional movement. The mobility of the
space has not only created diverse environmental experience for the inmates,
but also has realized the frequent interactions between inmates hence promoting
the healing effect.
In terms of the appearance, due to the changing
needs of the inmates to the healing space, the inner form of the building is kept dynamic and adaptive. At different times, by
observing the location and volume of the clusters formed by different cells,
inmates’ current psychological status and the needs for particular space could be identified.
Rather than being differentiated through
conventional parameters, inmates are identified and
distinguished by the types of personality disorders they are suffering from.
Each inmate’s experience of space and healing path is determined in accordance
with their unique personalities and healing needs. The sentence is not merely
sentence here; it is a customized self-healing journey. One’s peculiar
character determines one’s fate.
The length of staying in the building is no longer
determined based on the type of crime one has committed, rather is determined
by psychological indicators such that psychological and behavioral assessments
are done periodically to determine when it is a proper timing for the inmates
to return to the society. This spontaneous healing mechanism promotes a more
positive way of self-discovery and personality improvement. Life path and the
meaning of space are being revolutionarily redefined
here in the Healing Matrix. Read the rest
of this entry »
The Displacement Or The Revolt Of
Abandoned Architecture
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Ko Anthony Chun Ming
Hong Kong
In the 21st Century, the act of cities throwing
away architectures and everything that contributed to their present scene is no
longer strange to the eyes. Everyday there are buildings being
torn down, immeasurable amount of objects being abandoned and sent to
landfills at an overwhelming rate. Neighborhoods change progressively,
eventually becoming a place we are no longer familiar with.
In Japan, the government created artificial islands
within Tokyo Bay as a method to bury the evidence of earthquakes debris and also, indirectly reduce landfills. Unwanted objects are then hidden beneath as reclaimed lands. Their existence
and contribution to the city are obscured.
It is urgent; a revolt is needed
to criticize on the erasing actions of human and cities without considering the
true values of what it is demolished.
The ‘Displacement’ is to evoke the nostalgic
emotion of mankind, through architectural salvage to
regenerate the abandoned and hence turnaround their fate to be forgotten. Boats
and ships perform the salvation by moving the abandoned from their origin to
Harumi in Tokyo Bay, an artificial island where the project took place.
The salvaged are then processed through the factory
on-site, granting them a new aura relationship while inheriting their memories
as well. The whole architecture is an empty framework sitting on the site.
Through the architectural salvation, it will continually be infilled with the
reclaimed objects and buildings in phases and in the end
it attains saturation. It is an architecture that
inherits buildings. Not hiding what we abandoned, but acknowledging their
efforts to create our memories. Read
the rest of this entry »
Neza York Towers: Anti-Sinking System For Cities
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Israel López Balan, Gabriel Mendoza Cruz, Ana Saraí
Lombardini Hernández, Yayo Melgoza Acuautla
Mexico
Neza York
Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl or more commonly Ciudad Neza, is a
city and municipality of State of Mexico adjacent to the northeast corner of
Mexico City. In the 20th Century, the land on which Ciudad Neza
sits was under Lake Texcoco and uninhabited.
Successful draining of the lake in the early 20th Century created new land,
which the government eventually sold into private hands. Today Ciudad Neza is a sprawling city of over one million entirely with
modern buildings.
Until the 2000s, most migrants from Mexico to the
United States, especially to places like New York, were from poor rural areas.
However, since the turn of the century, another wave of immigrants is coming
from poor urban areas such as Ciudad Neza.
These immigrants tend to be younger and better
educated than their rural counterparts, and tend also
to keep separate from them. This is bringing into existence a new Mexican subculture called “Neza
York” distinguished by dress, speech and the likelihood of learning English.
Businesses with names like Tacos Neza and Neza Grocery have appeared in New York City.
Subsidence
As Mexico City continues to pull water from the aquifer below, its ground is
sinking. The subsidence that results from groundwater extraction is a problem
all over the world, but is especially dramatic in Mexico City. The aquifer has
been under increasing pressure over the last several decades as the city’s
population has skyrocketed.
While subsidence has been
stabilized in the city center, many parts of the metropolitan area
continue to sink. Some parts like Ciudad Neza have
sunk more than 30 feet during the last century.
Vicious Circle
Mexico City puts a lot of effort to stop the sinking. In some locations it has caused the sewage lines to become slanted –
resulting in the lines running backward. Consequently, the city struggles with
flooding during the rainy season. Emergency pumping stations have
been built to maintain extraction capacity, but a major solution is
still needed.
The water difficulties have become a vicious
circle: as the city grows, more water is pumped from
the aquifer. As more is pumped, the city sinks
further. The sinkage ruptures more underground water
pipes, sending fresh water gushing into the sewers, aggravating the shortage,
requiring more water to be pumped from the aquifer,
and so on.
Design Concept
If Mexico City receives significant pluvial precipitation at a total rate of
215 m3/s, pluvial water is partly responsible for the urban flooding problem in
rainy season, but rainwater harvesting could be part of the solution for people
living in Ciudad Neza. Here, rainfall is heaviest,
and the area is sufficient to collect and store water to reduce costs.
In the other hand, the total amount of wastewater
treated by public wastewater treatment plants is 10 m3/s and all the treated
wastewater is reused. At the present time, reused
water is utilized to fill recreational lakes and canals (54%), to irrigate
agricultural areas and parks over a total area of 6,500 ha (31%), cooling in
industry (8%), diverse commercial activities (5%) and to recharge the aquifer
(only 2%).
With all this in mind, the proposal is to replace
gradually the network of small storm sewers in Ciudad Neza
with a rainwater system collector that converge in recreational lakes on the
surface, where towers emerge as large natural filters for rainwater storage; and
treatment plants with absorption wells for underground injection. Following
this system, floods will decrease because drainage system of the city will not be saturated in rainy season, and after treated
water is injected directly into the aquifer, the sinking will stop. Read the rest of this entry »
Towards Unity: Suturing Cyprus
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Lin Rujia
China
Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean is a divided
country between Greeks and Turks. Nicosia is the capital of Cyprus and it’s the
only city divided in two in the world since 1974.
The demographic composition of Nicosia consists of
Turks who live in northern cities and Greeks who live in southern cities. There
were lots of public spaces and facilities in the “UN Buffer Zone” before Cyprus
was divided and people needed them. But
at the same time, the “UN Buffer Zone” became a barrier between the two parts
because of it’s a limit of height. Both Turks and Greeks in Nicosia are looking
forward to a unified country.
This project changes the horizontal “UN Buffer
Zone” and public spaces near it to a vertical direction. Both Turks and Greeks
ordinary life will have an intersection in the new skyscrapers
There are three design points of the “Unify
Monument” skyscrapers: 1) Looking at it for each time, people in Cyprus could
remember those periods that Cyprus were split into two
parts. 2) Water is one of the most important elements for people in Nicosia.
Water in vertical “UN Buffer Zone” can make people know that we connected the
two parts with “water”, and this is an important function of the skyscrapers.
3) These skyscrapers distribute in all the main areas of Cyprus, which are passed through by the “UN Buffer Zone”. So the whole
Cyprus will be “sutured” by these skyscrapers because all the people will go
into them for public spaces. All main cities in Cyprus will build one
skyscraper like Nicosia and each one will set up a corresponding relationship
with the part of “UN Buffer Zone” in each city, and then, the whole country will be sutured by these skyscrapers. Read the rest of this entry »
A Core Issue Against Smog: The
New Urban Air Infrastructure
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Fangshuo Liu, Xiaoyu Wu, Qianhui
Liang, Jin Che, Shoda Tomoki, Pablo Mariano Bernar
Fernández-Roca
China, Spain
The human activities’ byproducts, such as the
piston effect of the metro and elevators and the stack effect of the dominating
skyscrapers within the metropolis, are generally unexplored due to the
ignorance of the severity of the environmental situation. Based
on the fact that the smog problem within Chinese metropolis always
concurs with the lack of airflow due to meteorological reasons, this design
intends to utilize these passive energies as the source of urban airflow.
By a careful analysis of our site, Lujiazui, Shanghai, China and the discovery of the
never-changing core structure system behind the ever-changing facades of the
skyscrapers, our team arrived at the conclusion that designing a new core
prototype could be of great value not just to the incorporation of these
passive energies mentioned above into the great war against smog, but also to
the education of the entire population.
Beside the traditional functions of a core such as
the stairs, the, toilets, the shafts and the elevators, this new core prototype
includes this very core urban issue of air. Passive airflows from subways,
elevators, atriums and stacks are intentionally conducted through a serious of
carefully designed spaces and devices, so that the dangerous pollutants in the
atmosphere can be absorbed by the mature and energy efficient methods,
including centrifuge, wet deposition, HEPA, phytoremediation, and low voltage
adsorption. Meanwhile more public and green spaces are
created along this process, so that everyone within and without this
building can interact with it to get more awareness of the air situation.
With the smog becoming a national issue, the
government and the citizens in China are forced to
fight together. FAR policies can be adopted to
encourage the developers to apply this new core prototype, which benefits the
city, making such bold architectural adventure more sensible. Read the rest of this entry »
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
M Architects Ltd.
Minh Phuc Nguyen, Linh Phuong Phan Vietnam
Hanoi, a city inside the river, is a sanctuary and special
city. It is not only the capital of Vietnam but also a place where histories
throughout different eras have met, where all cultural and historical values
have converged and which has been inhabited since at least 3000 BC.
Hanoi has evolved significantly from its core – The
Old Quarter. This Quarter initially started with 36 streets with each street
had its name reflected the business trading happening on the street. This is
one of many unique points of Hanoi. Some of the streets currently still reflect
that such as: Steel street, Silk street, Paper Craft
street. Hanoian is very proud of the Old Quarter.
Especially, families those have been living here for many generations, those
who called the Old Quarter the cradle of culture.
Hanoi nowadays is a big capital and comparable to
London, UK. However, the expansion has been done much
faster than living conditions of people. This has caused tremendous problem of
leaving a large area of new parts of Hanoi in very much poor conditions in
terms of people’s lives as well as infrastructure. There have been a lot of new urban developments started to fill up the gaps
and to reduce density from the City center since then. However, due to unready
infrastructure conditions in the new expansion areas, people still pull
themselves into the city center to trade, work, and live. This has become a
serious fact for a thousand year old capital. Together with the urbanization,
the Core of Hanoi has become more complex. The complexity could
be described through population density, types of professions,
building’s functions and infrastructure. The Old Quarter is still the most
important Centre of the City attracting a lot of businesses and trades as well
as tourists, famous for its street activities within a human scaled street
covered by two rows of trees along both sides.
The Tower is stemmed from
an idea of bringing the horizontal density of Hanoi to a vertical living space
and still reflecting all beautiful aspects of an Old Quarter and a busy city
center. The Tower is expected to be a Happy Tower
where people will live their lives with full of joys, experience good
facilities and where tourists could come and experience Hanoi’s History through
different eras. The Tower is also an ambition of future architecture, which is integrated with potential technologies to provide an
uplifting sustainable living condition.
The Tower is a combination of modules, which
reflect Hanoi urban density in a better way. Two types of modules are created: Experience and Residential. The Experience is distributed along the Tower right from ground level to
the Top. These are places of interests, where visitors come and experience
History of Hanoi. They will find different atmosphere, different experiences
starting from Prehistory, Early Dynastic Epoch, through to French invasion
period till current status. Moreover, these are covered with solar fiber in order to self-collect solar
energy. The Residential distribution reflects the density throughout historic
periods.
A great Core in the center connects all modules.
This Core is not only for vertical transportation; it is where technologies are integrated in order to transform energy collected from
the Experience’s solar fiber and the residential cladded PV fibers. Besides, it
could self-collect energy from the earth and ground water. In addition, modules
also are connected by horizontal connections acting
like pathways or water tubes. Read the rest of this entry »
Osteon Cumulus Vertical City: Kilometer-High City
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Layton Reid, Adrian Jimenez Escarfullery,
Sakib Hasan, Bryan Ruiz, Milot
Pivera
United Kingdom
Site
The prototypical site in China, Wuxi City, Jiansu
Province, allows the exploration of issues of displacement and cultural
identity as well as those of community and diversity as defined by
architectural form.
The smart city leverages both passive and active
technologies in its formation this includes the local, as a definition of
connectivity, with off grid networks owned by the inhabitants. It is proposed
that the physical and material qualities of this construct should manifest
itself in a porus coral like form , these can either
appear as slices joined together to form a more conventional urban grain or as
in this instance become a stacked series of evolving circumstances defined by
the consequence of the internal and external environment.
Concept
The banyan tree deposits additional downward branches to stabilize its imposed
load much in the manner of this structure, Osteon city maximizes the potential
of a small footprint, touching the earth lightly, whilst providing the maximum
in amenity, at times appearing as a cumulo-nimbus
cloud formation, and at others as a floating forest.
Ethos
The proposition consider the nature of the skyscraper as a 210 floor community,
where work , retail ,, hospitality , leisure and residential accommodation form
an aerial community serviced horizontally by driverless cars and bicycles swegeways and pedestrian routes.
Structure and form
The diagrid is re purposed to a waffle format, much like a radiator, the
interleaving structural elements , join together to form a self
supporting yet extremely strong and flexible structure.The
elements which make up the structure are porus
lightweight and analogous to bone “ osteo, it is
envisaged that the construction will make use of rapid prototyping techniques
on an industrial scale with integrated services technology.
These elements are then horizontally braced with
walkways and lift cores .
Zoning
The three main elements of residential, leisure and work are located within the
vertical elements of then tower , whilst retail sits
within the landscape mounds which appear to rise and descend from the aerial
parks .
Residential elements are disposed within the
diagrid structure, cradled such that they can be
interconnected to form more or less complex arrangements as required.
Aerial parks and landscape
These areas, provide respite and a sense of localism
to the towers inhabitants, the voids allow light to penetrate deep into the
structure, whose surfaces act as sun scoops illuminating the inner areas of the
tower.
Vertical farms
Within the leisure zoned tower additional atria are
created to house a range of agricultural activities thus making the aim of self sustainability an achievable goal when allied to the
range of personal and communal garden solutions allowed by the proposal.
Sustainability, energy, microclimate
The aims of a building of this type are to act as an energy generator, hence
the form mimicking that of radiator. The blade like surfaces
of the structure house micro turbines and solar surfaces in the porous blade
like structure these are used to drive local amenities, energy generated is
stored and exchanged through the structure and surface of the building .at its
highest levels temperature differentials, create precipitate, which can be
encouraged, dissuaded used immediately, or stored for re use as directed by the
control mechanisms contained within each zone.
Plan
The ground level structure defines a series of light filled plazas, whilst the
upper levels show the range of spatial configurations, which include crescents
and squares, roads and land bridges. Read
the rest of this entry »
Vertical Shanghai: Hyperlocal Monument Of
The Global Housing Crisis
Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition
Yuta Sano, Eric Nakajima
Australia
It is apparent that throughout history, diversity
fuels innovation and progress. Many studies show that multi-lingual individuals
are better at problem solving, and multi-cultural societies spark new ideas and
provoke critical thinking. Reversibly, lack of diversity and variation will
stunt our imagination. This is also true with spatial environments, as lack of
diverse spaces that we inhabit everyday will hinder our capabilities to be more
imaginative and creative. Globalization is therefore a phenomenon that has
indisputably aided the advancement of our civilization by cross-pollinating
ideas, culture and tradition around the world, however, the benefits of
globalization will foreseeably expire shortly if we are not careful with how we
progress.
Today, in the midst of a housing crisis where 70%
of the world’s population is expected to be living in
cities by 2050, building high-density apartments to accommodate mass migration
and population growth is a natural response to the demands our economy is
facing. To solve this global crisis, we have banded together through free trade
of goods and knowledge to provide efficient building solutions by standardizing
construction materials, techniques and spatial configurations.
Although it may be effective, as a result,
repetitive and standardized apartments are being built
all over the world irrespective of its location, and living spaces categorized
into types to meet the image of modern living. No matter how idealistic this
temporary solution may be, this type of ‘Global Modernization’ is a slow
devolution of our race as it sets a standard of a unified cultural norm and
irradiates diversity through socio-global expectations.
China is an extreme example of ‘Global
Modernization’. Within a few decades, China has assimilated cities by rapidly
building high-density apartments, and more often than not, by demolishing old
towns and structures that are rich in local culture and tradition. This
careless rapid urbanization is not only wiping out historical artifacts but also
eliminating opportunity for diversity in the future. Local, cultural, and
spatial diversity is a necessity for enlightenment and enriching progress,
therefore we must ask ourselves “is global unification worth the extinction of
local characteristics?” Read the rest
of this entry
»