The 2018 International Student Tall Building Design Competition ran on the theme of "Future of Humanity", which relies on the collective benefits of urban density; reducing both land consumption and the energy needed to construct and operate the horizontally dispersed city. 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.
2018 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Overview
1st Place
Ethnic-Minority Sky Village
Yiming Gui, Ziyue Li, and Ziqiao Ma, Shenyang Jianzhu University
The unique karst landform in Guizhou Province Causes serious soil erosion and rocky desertification. We conducted a detailed study of the local geomorphological features and found that due to the existence of this landform, the land economy of ethnic minorities, for example, the Miao nationality, etc, cannot develop land economy and lack of effective use on local resources. Due to the division of the mountains, the settlement of life and the small-agricultural characteristics of the planting land are scattered, lacking the scale of the economy needs, and the water resources shortage has also caused a great damage to the lives of local people.
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2nd Place
Inside Out + Outside In
Yirong Li, University of South Wales
This design starts with a criticism of the traditional ‘transit hub’, which is often enclosed within a solid box, through which thousands of people move each day. Urbanistically, this project aims to liberate the transit hub from an interior space, to an exterior semi-covered public park in Circular Quay in Sydney – an urban move that seeks to link water, train, light rail and bus transit through a dramatic new public space for the city. At the building scale, the project seeks to draw the activity and vibrancy of public spaces at ground into the sky. Instead of having large cores in each individual building, the civic tower plays the role of lift core for the cluster of buildings.
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3rd Place
Porocity: A Civic Vertical Campus
Frank Chin, University of South Wales
What differentiates this design concept, with other educational high rise buildings, is its unique approach to dead spaces. In a typical educational high rise building, they are predominantly based on a core and shell concept, retrofitted to accommodate teaching spaces and hiding itself amongst other tall buildings. The proposed design voids this concept as the typology primarily takes on the approach of expanding communal open spaces for informal learning. Whilst each program of the building is subjected to operate differently with each other to function its intended purpose, the overall program all foster a similar intent, of ‘out of class’ spaces for gathering, faculty interaction and interconnection.
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4th Place
Convertible Hospital
Chinh-Ting Yeh, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
A convertible hospital provide the most immediate medical emergency in the country which often happened war such us Syria, Israel, Palestine, Ukraine and Iraq. When the war happened , In addition to downsizing the entire building to below the ground, building blocks can be quickly remove and be shipped by helicopter to the surrounding areas. The idea of building is originated from China's traditional skills - Luban lock. "Luban Lock" is a three-axis combination of building blocks, there are several forms, the six groups of the most common and six different blocks combined with each other into a square.
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5th Place
Hyper City: New Type of Architecture Generated by Future Cities
Xieran Cai and Leqi Lu, University of Southern California
HyperLoop brings people from other metropolitan regions to the center of Downtown LA either as a destination (to work, entertain or live) or to transit and go somewhere else. As a direct destination, the building will hold the functions of public area, office and apartment (microcity). A high density mixed-use tower is a response to the need and the central-urban site. Unlike typical mixed use towers, the public program and spaces are organized vertically to create interactions with tower at different levels. All these public spaces become a vertical urban park. This continuous urban park is connected to the vertical transition system that composed by Hyperloop, MetroLink, Ground vehicles and subways.
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Funding Sponsor: Council on Vertical Urbanism
2025 International Student Tall Building Design Competition Winners
Funding Sponsor: AECOM
2023 International Student Tall Building Design Competition Winners
Funding Sponsor: Think Wood
2022 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Funding Sponsor: TKE Aufzugswerke GmbH
2021 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Funding Sponsor: Council on Vertical Urbanism
2020 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Funding Sponsor: Tetra Tech
2019 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
2017 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Funding Sponsor: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates
2016 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
Funding Sponsor: Plaza Construction
2015 International Student Tall Building Design Competition
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