Check out these incredible high-rise designs of the future
eVolo crowned winners of its 2022 Skyscraper Competition, and they are spectacular. Three winners and 20 honorable mentions were chosen by a jury. In total, 427 projects were submitted, imagining innovative ways to push vertical architecture to address the world’s most pressing problems. Started back in 2006, this annual award recognizes visionary ideas through the use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics and spatial organizations. It also hopes to challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.
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First place went to Climate Control Skyscraper designed by Kim Gyeong Jeung, Min Yeong Gi and Yu Sang Gu from South Korea. With natural disasters rising exponentially and global temperatures peaking historically, the designers of Climate Control Skyscraper wanted to go beyond awareness of climate change and apply technology to the urgent issue. The winning entry creates clouds by absorbing seawater to regulate the weather. It creates rain when there is a drought, then absorbs clouds when there is heavy rainfall. The building also reflects solar radiation.
Related: Solar helps make this cool Austin tower net energy neutral
According to the designers, “The project investigates the use of a series of skyscrapers to modify weather conditions that would improve the global climate crisis and stop desertification, rising temperatures and natural disasters.”
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Designers Wang Jue, Zhang Qian, Zhang Changsheng, Li Muchun and Xu Jing from China won second place for their project Tsunami Park. This skyscraper is designed as a man-made inhabited mangrove for the Tonga region to prevent tsunamis affecting the Pacific Rim.
This skyscraper is designed for Tonga’s long and narrow coastline to reduce the ecological damage of tsunamis. The building is planted with mangrove forests, which are known for their protective effect on coastlines from major storms like hurricanes and tsunami waves. Each cell making up the complex of this building along the coast is made of a foundational cement pillar designed to withstand the force of tsunamis. Lastly, there is an upper multi-floor platform that sits high above the oncoming wave.
Third Place was awarded to New Spring: Agro-ecological Skyscraper designed by Michał Spólnik from Austria and Marcin Kitala from Poland. Their proposal envisioned a skyscraper as an aggregation of garden modules containing a variety of flora and microorganisms that could be deployed to specific regions to make them flourish with new life. Thereby, New Spring is an ecological skyscraper that grows diverse food to help with global hunger.
Regenerative Highrise is a multi-purpose skyscraper for Oslo. It will connect various parts of the city while minimizing construction waste and is built to be reprogrammed for different uses over time.
But what we really have to mention here is the Urban Condenser by Yunheng Fan, Baoying Liu, Rongwei Gao and Junliang Liu of China. This movie-like futuristic skyscraper hangs over the countryside in an arc. The building is designed to house migrant workers in China’s increasingly dense urban areas and create a social means for them to blend into society. But more than anything, it’s an astonishing look at how our cities might build up and out in the future.