The 3 outstanding winners of the eVolo Skyscraper Competition

For 11 years, eVolo Magazine has been recognizing and awarding visionary ideas for high-rise projects. For the annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition, Designers and architects from around the world “are challenged to re-examine the skyscraper’s definition, purpose, and potential for vertical living in the 21st century.”

Of the 489 projects submitted, the jury selected three winners and 21 honourable mentions. The winners touch on three important issues - the preservation of nature in our growing urban landscapes, the incorporation of drones into everyday life, and the carbon footprint generated by storing digital data.

First Place: New York Horizon (United States)

The first place prize was awarded to Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu for their project, New York Horizon (top image). The duo’s design defies conventions from the get go, redefining our definition of the “skyscraper,” and focusing on the ground-level (and what’s below the surface), rather than reaching new heights.  

Sun and Wu’s award-winning design is set in Manhattan, a city known for its dense population, iconic skyscrapers, and home to one of the world’s most iconic urban parks. The project features a “horizontal skyscraper” that lines the perimeter of Central Park. This unconventional structure would provide Manhattan with seven miles of housing with unobstructed views of Manhattan’s largest public green space.

In dense urban landscapes, park and green spaces are a luxury. Sun and Wu’s design attempts to make the city’s public park space available to more people by creating new inhabitable space along the perimeter of the park. In their proposal, the 1,000-foot tall megastructure wraps around all four sides of the park and uses highly reflective glass to create the illusion of an infinite landscape when standing in the park.

Second Place: The Hive (United States)

Via eVolo Magazine

The second place prize was awarded to Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, and Chengda Zhu for their drone skyscraper. In recent years, drones have been making headlines for their use in new delivery systems, aerial mapping, scientific research, search and rescue missions, law enforcement, photography, and filmmaking.

As major corporations begin to explore the possibility of using drones for high-speed delivery services, it is becoming clear that these unmanned aircrafts will soon be an integral part of our everyday life.

The Hive is designed to meet the needs of this burgeoning drone industry. The tower at 432 Park Avenue would function as a “central control terminal that hosts docking and charging stations for personal or commercial drones in the center of Manhattan.”

Today, a number of legal restrictions around the navigation of drones are inhibiting their use. However, The Hive aims to appeal to the legislative sector by adhering to concerns about regulating drone traffic and keeping drones out of the no-fly-zones set by the FAA. The facade is a set of modules that provide a safe landing environment for the drones.

As a central docking zone, the facade of The Hive is alive, changing constantly as drones of all shapes and sizes dock and take off on their way to deliver mail, pick up our groceries, take photos, or make repairs around the city.

Third Place: Data Skyscraper (Italy)

Via eVolo Magazine

Third place was awarded to Valeria Mercuri and Marco Merletti of Italy for their sustainable data centre in Iceland, Data Skyscraper.

By the end of 2016, annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte threshold (1 sextillion bytes). As the Internet of Things continues to grow and we continue to transfer more of our daily tasks and transactions into the digital sphere, there will be a real need to create a secure physical space where we can store and process the massive volume of digital information we generate every day.

We rarely think about the environmental cost of a simple Google search. However, every mouse click is stored as data in a server, and these data centres have massive carbon footprints. Servers absorb a lot of power, and need to be constantly cooled to avoid overheating.

Marco and Merletti’s design seeks to reduce the environmental impact of storing our digital information by hosting data centres in climates where the power is clean and costs are low. The duo therefore proposed Iceland as the ideal location for their massive Data Skyscraper.

Iceland offers clean energy services (hydropower and geothermal) at a competitive price, and is located near the Arctic Circle where fresh cool breezes can be used to offset the financial and environmental cost of traditional cooling systems.

The external facade of Data Skyscraper is a giant 3D motherboard equipped with hardware components, while the interior is mostly empty, serving as a giant air duct cooling system. A large fan at the top of the tower helps keep the servers cool by creating a chimney effect that utilizes Iceland’s natural cool air. Warm air is expelled or saved to heat the laboratories in the basement of the structure. Like the live facade of The Hive, the exterior of Data Skyscraper would constantly change as new hardware is added or upgraded.

eVolo Skyscraper Competition Honourable Mentions

Air-Stalagmite - via eVolo Magazine

eVolo Magazine also selected 21 projects as honourable mentions. These projects include an Air-Stalagmite designed to purify air in polluted cities, a Cloud Craft that helps produce rainwater in dry cities, a vertical streetscape, and a re-imagined correction centre that aims to heal and rehabilitate rather than punish. To learn more about eVolo’s honourable mentions, and see where the future of architecture and sustainable development is headed, browse through the winners here.

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