First place: Derek Perozzi's Polar Umbrella. This mushroom-shaped skyscraper would provide shade in order to allow polar icecaps to reform
First place: Derek Perozzi's Polar Umbrella. This mushroom-shaped skyscraper would provide shade in order to allow polar icecaps to reform
Second place: Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo's Phobia Skyscraper is a mesh of prefab units embedded into a structure of recycled industrial material
Third place: Ting Xu and Yiming Chen's Light Park is a floating city to provide green areas to space-choked cities
Honorable mention: Symbiocity, A New Prison Typology by Khem Aikwanich, Nigel Westbrook. Prisons overlooking the city will inspire inmates to give up their lives of crime, is the idea
Honorable mention: Urban Earth Worm Skyscraper by Lee Seungsoo. Not just a clever name, this design is intended to cleanse the air and soil
Honorable mention: Water Re-Balance Skyscraper by Zhang Zhiyang, Liu Chunyao is gigantic rainwater harvesting and purification system
Honorable mention: Volcano Skyscraper by Jing Hao, Zhanou Zhang, Xingyue Chen, Jiangyue Han, Shuo Zhou. This design harvests geothermal energy from active volcanoes. Good luck getting home insurance
Honorable mention: Crater-Scraper by Xiaomia Xiao, Lixiang Miao, Xinmin Li, Minzhao Guo. A sunken city to harvest light and rainwater
Honorable mention: Repair Goaf by Liangpeng Chen, Yating Chen, Lida Huang, Gaoyan Wu, Lin Yuan. A city that occupies an abandoned coal mine
Honorable mention: PH Conditioner Skyscraper by Hao Tian, Huang Haiyang, Shi Jianwei. Yet more floating jellyfish, these aim to neutralize acidic pollutants in the atmosphere
Honorable mention: Sounscraper by Julien Bourgeois, Olivier Colliez, Savinien de Pizzol, Cédric Dounval, Romain Grouselle. The concept harvests sound energy from its surrounds.
Honorable mention: Stratosphere Network of Skyscrapers by Mingxuan Dong, Yuchen Xiang, Aiwen Xie, Xu Han. Skyscrapers that penetrate the stratosphere are connected at their pinnacles in a hexagonal grid to provide stability
Honorable mention: The 7th Continent by Park Sung-Hee, Na Hye Yeon. This excellently-named effort is a modular floating city designed to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Honorable mention: Big Wood by Michael Charters is a wooden skyscraper based on recent research into the feasibility of tall wooden buildings. This one might not be all that crazy
Honorable mention: Promised Land Waterscraper by Chen Yao, Xiao Yunfeng, Li Xiaodi, Xie Rui, Yin Xiaoxiang. A self-sustaining contigency in the event of a dramatic rise in sea level
Honorable mention: Zero Skyscraper by Ekkaphon Puekpaiboon is a data-vault city from which to rebuild after the inevitable forthcoming apocalypse
Honorable mention: Sea-Ty by Shinypark, Liu Tang, Lyo Heng Liu. A floating bowl lets the sky into a sunken city
Honorable mention: In Charybdis Waterscarper by Nam Il Joe, Laura E. Lo, Mark T. Nicol is built from plastic scavenged from the ocean
Honorable mention: Nomad: Terraforming Mars, by Antonio Ares Sainz, Joaquin Rodriguez Nuñez, Konstantino Tousidonis Rial
Honorable mention: Moses by Milos Vlastic, Vuk Djordjevic, Milos Jovanovic, Darki Markovic; a distributed network of floating skyscrapers
Honorable mention: Aeroponic Vertical Farming by Jin Ho Kim. The city as a farm, designed to address humanity's growing dependency on rice
Honorable mention: Quantum Skyscraper by Ivan Maltsev, Artem Melnik. A crystalline, energy-producing research center
Honorable mention: The Scraper Collects and Burns the Pacific Garbage Patch by Jong Hyuk Lim, Seung Jun Park, Sung Wha Na, Jae Chung ko, Ho Young Yeo, Gyoeng Hwan Kim. Self-explanatory, I think
Honorable mention: Skinscape, Morphing Contiguous Skyscrapers by Woongyeun Park, Jaegeun Lim, Haejun Jung, Karam Kim. We're not entirely sure what's happening here, but it was inspired by the overgrowth of Banyan trees at Angkor Wat
Honorable mention: Ring of Mars by Mamon Alexander, Tyutyunnik Artem. A linear city that entirely surrounds the red planet.
Honorable mention: Sphera, 2150 Megacity by Santi Musmeci, Sebastiano Maccarrone. A spheroid built from the salvaged remains of abandoned cities
Honorable mention: Mist Tree in Atacama Desert by Yeonkyu Park, Kwon Han, Hyeyeon Kwon, Hojeong Lim. A moisture-harvesting scheme for the irrigation of the desert
View gallery - 27 images
eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of its 2013 speculative skyscraper design competition. Novelty, be it technical or aesthetic, is the order of the day, and while one shouldn't expect to see any of these designs crop up in their chosen city of residence at any point in the next 3,000 or so years, there is plenty of first rate eye-candy and a smattering of urban speculative to peruse. Prepare to suspend disbelief.
The awards are given to bold concepts for skyscrapers submitted directly to the architecture magazine, and, it should be stressed, not to actual skyscrapers designed or built during the last 12 months.
The first place award went to Derek Perozzi for his eye-catching Polar Umbrella (pictured above), a floating mushroom-shaped skyscraper, the cap of which provides shade, the intention being to regrow polar icecaps. The city itself is envisioned as part research facility, part tourist attraction, and the designers intend that many such cities would be built where shade is most needed.
Second place: Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo's Phobia Skyscraper is a mesh of prefab units embedded into a structure of recycled industrial material
Phobia Skyscraper by Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo is a termite mound-like mesh of prefabricated units embedded into an empty tower made from scavenged industrial materials. The building is intended to morph and evolve over time to reflect the needs of its occupants.
Third place: Ting Xu and Yiming Chen's Light Park is a floating city to provide green areas to space-choked cities
Ting Xu and Yiming Chen's Light Park was awarded third place. This floating city is a proposal to add recreational space to a city without need of demolition. Although described as muchroom-shaped, this one looks more like a jellyfish, with a helium-filled bell keeping the city afloat in the sky.
A further 24 submissions received honorable mentions, details of which can be seen in the image gallery. In all, 625 projects were submitted from 83 different countries.
James writes about science and technology from his home in rural East Anglia. Whether it's the internet, nature, video games or AI, he pays particular heed to the flash points with culture, society and the planet.
6 comments
BigGoofyGuy
While they may not pop in any cities in the near future, it would really be cool if they did pop up in a movie(s) or on a syfy channel movie. I think they would make for a cool futuristic movie setting. :) I think the Jetsons would be jealous of these designs.
Max Kennedy
Looking at the designs they lack elegance and practicality. The only good to say about them is that they are good examples of what NOT to strive for.
Bob Flint
As they continue to dream, from the hard face of reality only number 21 seems realistic in our lifetime anyways.
Slowburn
Clearly rationality was not a judging criteria.
nutcase
Expect to see one of these go up in Dubai any day now...
Slowburn
re; nutcase The buildings in Dubai are built along rational lines and when you see how little land area Dubai actually has the quest for height does not look irrational.
The buildings in Dubai are built along rational lines and when you see how little land area Dubai actually has the quest for height does not look irrational.