1st Place
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Elie Gamburg
United States

First Place

This is a proposal for a 720m tall skyscraper to be located above the existing Belarussky Train Station in Moscow, Russia. The program consists of a hotel, assembly, retail, cultural spaces, and apartments. These respond to the needs of the site, which serves as a major gateway to Moscow by road and rail. The main road to St. Petersburg runs through the site and is intersected by the main train line to Europe. Built in 1870, Belarussky Train Station is one of Moscow’s most important historical structures. It was celebrated throughout its history and earned the moniker ‘victory station’ for its role in shuttling Soviet troops to the German front during WWII, and for receiving the first trainloads of soldiers returning victorious after the war. Read the rest of this entry »

2nd Place
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Rugel Chiriboga, Ted Givens
United States

Second Place

Our project is based in Jurong East, Singapore. The site benefits from its adjacency to a mass transit line station and beautiful natural lake amenity. It is located between a Chinese garden and a heavy industrial district with large residential developments. Unfortunately, these residential developments do not take full advantage of sustainable building opportunities that are inherent in this region. Cultural richness and diversity in use, sustainability, and innovation particular to climatic influences in the region were primary drivers for our concept development. Our intent is to blend site specific sustainable strategies with a new interpretation of high rise design, derived from the juxtaposition of the vibrant complexity found in the traditional Malay village and the streamlined efficiency of modern Singapore. We sought clues from nature that could be utilized to develop a sustainable approach that would provide a stark contrast to the existing architectural landscape. The heavy use of gardens, both in the landscape and in the towers, provides a point of cultural departure in a sea of relentless housing blocks adjacent to our site. Read the rest of this entry »

3rd Place
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Alberto Fernández, Susana Ortega
Chile

Third Place

Huasco City is a port in the north of Chile. The city is a place of important agricultural development thanks to the Huasco River, but in the last decade the water flux decreased, which will probably lead to agriculture disappearance in the near future. A new strategy is required to obtain water from the Atacama Desert. In this place there is a climatic phenomenon called Camanchaca, dense coastal fog that has dynamic characteristic: condensation at great heights that is carried towards coastal zones by strong wind currents. Its origin is in the anticyclone of the Pacific Ocean that produces a layer of stratocumulus, covering the coastal strip from Peru to northern Chile. The base of the cloud is at 400 meters (with a variation of 200 meters) above sea level. The second layer contains minerals from the sea, in lower concentration than sea water. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Christopher Talbott, George Tolosa
United States

Special Mention

The Freeway Interchange Tower seeks to reclaim the “throw-away” land often left in the wake of massive highway junctions, typically an abandoned, unattractive space at the center of maze-like crossings. These infrastructure nexus not only serve as transportation nodes, but also act as buffers between differing land conditions, uses, and city environments. In this particular site, the freeway interchange is bordered by low density residential neighborhoods on the south and east sides, a nearby institutional center to the north, and a major drainage canal to the northwest. With such proximity to varying uses and zoning regions, the interchange often becomes the separating barrier. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Daekwon Park
United States

Special Mention

Skyscrapers started to emerge in cities like Chicago and New York towards the end of 19th Century. Over a century has passed, and the skyscrapers become the norm for the big city centers throughout the world. Although the skyscraper itself is truly an achievement of modern technology and vision, the urban space that is created by the collection of these seems to be fragmented, limited, and very unkind to nature. The project takes place in this urban context, investigating the way to reunite the isolated city blocks and insert a multi-layered network of public space, green space, and nodes for the city. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Tingxing Tao
United States

Special Mention

Interaction is the influence of two systems on one another, which can be understood as interchange and interrelation between the two. Transition means the connection from one status to another, or a gradual or sudden transformation between the two parts. Living-Tower is designed as a vertical strategy that situates itself within the most complex urban context- Shanghai, which is considered as the fastest-developing city in the fastest-developing country. Emphasis of this project is given to examining the idea of the interactive transition within and outside a building. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Ben Simmons, Daniel O. Ware, Ginger Watkins, Joseph H. Tiu
United States

Special Mention

V-Hive for Vertical Hive – a concept for skyscraper design utilizing the natural organic growth of unitary hexagonal cells, which cluster, grow, and evolve to form honeycomb colonies in a vertical fashion, and applied to the vertical nature of skyscrapers. By creating a lattice structure to which these cells can attach, the organic germinating nature of city growth is reproduced. The clustering of individual cells form sky-pod colonies, which themselves become “neighborhoods” or “buildings”, in a vertical urban environment. Thus the life and energy of the two-dimensional/horizontal urban fabric of the city is continued along on the three-dimensional/vertical axis through the void/core of a transparent and environmentally permeable structure. This allows for the formation of an open-air 360 degree vertical urban corridor. This concept takes skyscraper design from the vacuum of visual icon to the experiential level of the vertical street. The honeycomb is the most efficient geometric structure in terms of using the least amount of material needed to obtain stability. Modular and rigorously structured, yet evolves into an organic whole. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Frank Mahan
United States

Special Mention

The government-established program for the new U.S. embassy currently under construction in Baghdad is extraordinarily large, dwarfing any other embassy in the world. This project accepts this dubious program as its starting point, but questions how it and the architecture might change over time. In the first radical gesture, the embassy is configured as a tower, the most iconic, visible, and counterintuitive form for the building. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Vincent Barué
France

Special Mention

Live in a tower if you want to! Simply push one button to look beyond the horizon, watch the sun rising, admire your town’s aerial view. See without being seen with a complete view range of 360 degrees. Live the tower without the disadvantages, the price, the fears and dangers. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2008 Skyscraper Competition

Daniel Hammerman, Kevin Kehler
United States

Special Mention

Inspired by the transformative process of rusting and ecological gradients of day lighting, our mixed-use tower twists and modulates from a thin, flaky character to a sharp, solid condition as it rises from Battery Park City, in Lower Manhattan. Facade porosity varies in response to environmental simulations and incident solar calculations, becoming more open on the north face, while more enclosed on other elevations, and distribution of program is informed by interior day lighting levels. The concrete core, composite slab and complex lateral bracing are clad in Corian panels, which have been thoroughly studied for curvature and seaming to delineate and accentuate continuity of flow from floor to wall to window mullions to ceiling. Read the rest of this entry »