Architecture

Skyscraper competition celebrates the wildest ideas in architecture

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Living Skyscraper For New York City was designed by Andrii Lesiuk, Mykhaylo Kohut, Sofiia Shkoliar, Kateryna Ivashchuk, Nazarii Duda, Mariia Shkolnyk, Oksana-Daryna Kytsiuk, and Andrii Honcharenko. They won the 2021 eVolo Skyscraper Competition for their idea to use genetically modified trees to create a sustainable skyscraper
eVolo
Living Skyscraper For New York City was designed by Andrii Lesiuk, Mykhaylo Kohut, Sofiia Shkoliar, Kateryna Ivashchuk, Nazarii Duda, Mariia Shkolnyk, Oksana-Daryna Kytsiuk, and Andrii Honcharenko. They won the 2021 eVolo Skyscraper Competition for their idea to use genetically modified trees to create a sustainable skyscraper
eVolo
Second place went to the Lluvioso Skyscraper. Designed by Israel's Amit Deutch, Roni Dominitz, and Tamar Kerber, it imagines a skyscraper that collects rainwater, both for the tower itself and for the surrounding neighborhood in Mexico City
eVolo
Hmong Skyscraper, by Xiangshu Kong, Xiaoyong Zhang, and Mingsong Sun won third place position with a depiction of a skyscraper in China that draws on the traditional culture and architecture of the Hmong culture
eVolo
Up In The Squair: Skyscraper As Vertical Continuation Of Urban Space was designed by Alina Kandyba, Emil Stefansson, Josefin Antus, and Karl Östvall. It consists of a skyscraper that's a vertical extension of European urban centers in a bid to create a conversation on the use of inner-city space
eVolo
The Sponge: Skyscraper To Collect Rainwater For Drinking And Farming In Africa was designed by Lee Jae Uk and Kim Ji Hoo. It envisions a skyscraper that has extensive rainwater collection and storage facilities that could be used to supply villages in Africa that are without water
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Pyramids: Origin Of The First Modern Cities was designed by Adam Fernandez. The designer conceived a modern mixed-use skyscraper that draws heavy influence from the ancient pyramids
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Synonym Tower Uses Waste From The Nagorno-Karabakh War As Building Materials was designed by Zhang Zhenpeng and Feng Jialu. The project draws attention to the Armenia and Azerbaijan conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seeks to help the people there who have lost their place of worship and homes
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Printscraper: Rapid 3D-Printed Skyscraper For Reconstruction In China was designed by Liu Yifei, Tian Yu, Wang Hangdi, and Zhou Beiyu. This interesting project calls for a futuristic solar- and nuclear-powered skyscraper that's built using 3D-printing technology
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Mood Catcher Skyscraper Design To Treat Mental Disorders During The Pandemic was designed by Yao Junji, Liu Yuxi, An Peiyan, Chen Yuxuan, and Huang Yunting. As its name suggests, it calls for a high-rise building that can meet the needs of counseling and treatment for those with mental health issues following the COVID-19 pandemic
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The Pilgrim Skyscraper Brings Education To Remote Places Worldwide was designed by Michał Wachur``a and Kamil Wróbel. It depicts a series of buildings that can be used to spread education worldwide
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Urban Links: Suspended Habitable Bridges Above Existing Cities was designed by Xinru Yang, Jiang An, Ning Sun, Yunwei Pan, and Lifa Lin. It envisions a series of futuristic towers that create "a modern and sunny living environment for human beings"
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Terra Mycelia: Skyscraper Regenerates Farming Soil was designed by Linnea Pettersson, Ludvig Sundberg, Carmen Povedano Olleros, and Evelina Björndal. It would feature a series of towers that would regenerate the earth's soil in over-farmed areas with the use of fungus
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Ice-Making Skyscraper For The Arctic Ocean was designed by Lu Wang, Shuangjiang He, Ning He, Youjia Lv, and Limin Wang. It imagines the re-creation of the melting ice in the Arctic Ocean with a high-tech ice-producing skyscraper
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Biorefinery Skyscraper: A Carbon Negative Building For Hackney, London was designed by Daniel Hambly. It calls for a high tech and sustainable skyscraper in one of London's most polluted areas
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Self-Sustainable Skyscraper For Virus Outbreaks was designed by Yinan Qin, Bo Wei, Jingting Yan, and Chao Xie. The rather dystopian design imagines a future constantly plagued by COVID-19-like pandemics and includes a quarantine area, an area for monitoring visitors, with healthy people at the top. Skybridges would offer travel between neighboring towers
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Cliff Village In Sichuan, China, was designed by Dian Rui, Shuangyu Teng, and Yucheng Feng. It imagines developing and modernizing a small rural village in China with a cliff-hugging tower
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Post-Pandemic High-Rise Urban Planning was designed by Shuxian Li, Qiuchen Zheng, Yujia Hu, and Jiaxin Wen. It's another tower influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and would include housing, greenery, and leisure areas to keep people safe and well in a post-pandemic world
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Pathway Of Belonging: Multi-Function Skyscraper In Morocco For Immigrants was designed by Leonie Blum, Katharina Frank, Ritaj Albaje, and Simon Sundin. The project would provide a welcoming and safe space for immigrants
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Physarum Skyscraper Cleans Oceans Pollution was designed by Habib Shahhoseini, Mohaddeseh Eskandarzadeh, Ardalan Kiavar, Saba Salahpour, and Ata Rad. It imagines an ocean-based skyscraper that uses algae to clean up our polluted seas
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Time Machine Skyscraper – High-Tech Residential Tower was designed by Seyed Shervin Hashemi. We're not sure what's going on with this one so will quote the designer's own words "In the Time Machine, the user encounters a continuous saltational process of excitation or release: a sequence of compact and variegated functions indicated multiple simultaneously operating procedures, indexing different materials as well as different forces"
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Smokestack Symbiosis Skyscraper Purifies Air was designed by Xuekui Liu, Yashu Chen, Liyu Ai, Hao Wang, and Jialu Xu. It would absorb harmful pollution and, as a byproduct, create waste heat that could be used to help heat greenhouses that would grow large amounts of food
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Inner Skyscraper As Symbol Of Cultural Strength was designed by Xiaoguang Chen, Jinting Sui, Xufeng Tai, Xiaotong Ma, and Bai Lig. It would take unfinished and dilapidated buildings and update them with a modular system of recycled materials to make them habitable
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Urban Parasitic System: Hanging Programmatic Spaces Between Skyscrapers was designed by Shuaijie Li, Yueming Lin, Qian’er Pu, Jiajing Wang, and Jinda Liu. The design proposes filling spaces between skyscrapers with small parasitic homes
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The annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition is one of the most thought-provoking architecture contests around. Small on detail, but big on wild ideas, this year's crop of blue-sky conceptual designs includes a skyscraper made from genetically modified trees imagined for New York City and a water collecting tower that would hydrate Mexico City.

Originally conceived 15 years ago to promote new ideas for vertical living, this year's eVolo Skyscraper Competition consists of three winners and 20 honorable mentions. Read on below for a look at the three winners, before heading to the gallery to see each one of the 23 projects that are included.

"The Jury selected three winners and 20 honorable mentions from 492 projects received," says eVolo Magazine. "The annual award established in 2006 recognizes visionary ideas that through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments."

A Ukrainian team made up of Andrii Lesiuk, Mykhaylo Kohut, Sofiia Shkoliar, Kateryna Ivashchuk, Nazarii Duda, Mariia Shkolnyk, Oksana-Daryna Kytsiuk, and Andrii Honcharenko won first place in the 2021 eVolo Skyscraper Competition with an interesting idea for a tree-based tower (pictured above).

The project is named Living Skyscraper For New York City and would make use of a number of genetically modified fast-growing hardwood deciduous trees, which would be planted in specially prepared soil. They would then be grown into truly sustainable high-rise housing and/or office space. Though obviously far-fetched, it's a neat idea and feels like an evolution of the current crop of timber towers that are increasingly popular in cities around the world.

Second place went to the Lluvioso Skyscraper. Designed by Israel's Amit Deutch, Roni Dominitz, and Tamar Kerber, it imagines a skyscraper that collects rainwater, both for the tower itself and for the surrounding neighborhood in Mexico City
eVolo

Second place went to the Lluvioso Skyscraper, by Israel's Amit Deutch, Roni Dominitz, and Tamar Kerber. The project envisions a water collecting skyscraper that would reach a height of 400 m (1,312 ft).

Conceived for Mexico City, it would collect huge amounts of rainwater with a canopy measuring 600 m (1,968 ft) in diameter. The water would then be used both for the tower itself and the surrounding area. Additionally, the building would somehow help to reduce flood damage when seasonal floods occur in the area.

Hmong Skyscraper, by Xiangshu Kong, Xiaoyong Zhang, and Mingsong Sun won third place position with a depiction of a skyscraper in China that draws on the traditional culture and architecture of the Hmong culture
eVolo

Hmong Skyscraper, by Xiangshu Kong, Xiaoyong Zhang, and Mingsong Sun, won third place. This project envisions new housing that's inspired by the culture and architecture of the Hmong people, who have been required to relocate into new housing by the Chinese government due to the dilapidation of their traditional homes.

A series of high-rise towers that are inspired by Hmong stilt houses would serve as the basis for a new modern community. Over time the towers would be steadily expanded laterally as more residents moved in, with the idea being that they would continue to feel at home despite the growing size of the development.

Source: eVolo

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3 comments
BlueOak
Some wild ideas - the wilder, the better!
ljaques
There went the neighborhood.
Marco McClean
Each one reminds me of a different science fiction story. There's Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, for example, by Cordwainer Smith. And there's the Lavalite [Lava Lamp] World, from Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series. And any number of stories about growing houses by genetically modifying trees, and hanging houses on bridges and cliffs and other existing structures, and people living in tents in the skeletons of blasted skyscrapers, and re-terraforming Earth from vast city-machines floating on the sea. This is all great stuff. Cool art.