The 2017 International Student Tall Building Design Competition ran on the theme of "Connecting the City: People, Density & Infrastructure." Tall buildings must now be the vehicles for creating increased density not just through sheer height, but by connecting multiple layers of the city. Physical urban infrastructure, circulation, greenery, and urban functions traditionally restricted to the ground level would all, ideally, continue up and into the building, such that the buildings themselves become an extension of the city: a part of the two-dimensional horizontal urban plane flipped vertical. See more information on the five winners and projects below.
2017 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Overview
1st Place
Hong Kong: The City of Dual Perception
Dagmar Zvonickove, University of Westminster
Hong Kong is currently being recognized as Asia’s main Art hub, what if we inject an art gallery into the otherwise sterile and informal office tower? Art galleries are places of curated journeys, the proposed art gallery is inspired by the unique Hong Kong Street experience - it’s directionality, unpredictably, multiplicity and collectiveness. The exhibition space is divided into three key zones - the traditional miniature art exhibition spaces, the contemporary large scale art exhibition spaces and the “reset” zones in between these two. Where each of these spaces has very unique spatial characteristics enhancing the visitors experience of the certain kind of art observing.
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2nd Place
Producer: Self-Sustaining Skyscrapers
Qiang Zhou and Minghao Liu, Inner Mongolia University of Technology
In order to transform and adapt to natural environment which change suddenly and the impact of the current ecosystem for seeking a new balance between human and nature, we plan to design a local "SELF-SUSTAINING SKYSCRAPERS" in which we could transfer all the people of Tuvalu who have lost their homes due to rising sea levels. It can provide room for people to dwell, produce and live. In this way, we can bring the people of Tuvalu’s original way of life to vertical space. What’s more, we set up a mobile residential unit model in the building, and each family unit will have its own living capsules which will be able to travel between the ocean and the building flexibly.
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3rd Place
Networking Tradition and Future
Chitraj Bissoonauth and Jingxiang Tan, Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University
This project presents two networked towers – the E-Tower and the Maker Tower – which were originally developed as part of a larger masterplan comprising a group of 9 networked towers. The two towers complement each other in creating spaces for the future in two different approaches. The E-Tower supports commercial innovation and corporate business of the future while the Maker Tower hosts an urban community that seeks continuity with bottom-up craft-based local traditions and their integration with new technologies. The masterplan features several mutually supporting and enriching layers to address both social as well as environmental sustainability of urban contexts.
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4th Place
London Rising: Rethinking the Skyscraper in the Capital
Daniel Ong, University of Westminster
Member-nations of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNECOSOC) will be housed within this new complex. The architectural design is driven by the uniqueness of the site's 'extraterritoriality' status, typical of embassies. It dwells within the realm of diplomatic buildings, encapsulating the progressive yet domineering qualities of Embassy Architecture. It seeks to question the relevance of embassies as potent symbols of international commitment, as well as its politics and symbolism. The tower also possesses a certain level of control as it draws upon the restraint monumentality of other landmarks in the area.
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5th Place
Horizon of Future Cities
Shenglan Chen and Zihan Yang, Anhui Jianzhu University
In the early of the most super cities, there are lots of landscapes separately located in the city, but with the development of economy, cities such as New York, Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong, are filled with concrete jungle and little landscape can be preserved. The goal of the con concept is to reserve the poor little park which still exist in the concrete jungle, "Cities New horizon" is conceived to prevent from expansion of the city’s densely constructed buildings and towering skyscrapers, meanwhile, building on the diagonal line down to the ground can provide citizens with an available natural environment that they could enjoy and use as an escape from their busy urban lives.
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Funding Sponsor: Council on Vertical Urbanism
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