eVolo Magazine recently announced the winners of its 2013 Skyscraper Competition, and judging from the concept buildings entries this year, each one is more ingenious (and dare we say ambitious) than the next.
Polar Umbrella, First Prize Winner at the eVolo Competition
Taking First Prize is Derek Pirozzi’s Polar Umbrella, a domed superstructure that would serve as a research station for Arctic scientists. The building’s vast canopies shield the ice below from the sun’s rays, encouraging the formation of new ice while harvesting solar energy too. As for the seawater existing all around, the building makes use of newly discovered methods for harnessing energy from saltwater. With several installations to be spread across crucial areas in the Arctic, these umbrella-shaped buildings just might be the answer to Earth’s steadily melting polar caps.
The extremely modular Phobia Skyscraper of France
Second Place goes to Darius Maïkoff and Elodie Godo of France for their Phobia Skyscraper, a modular building meant to revive France’s abandoned transit system Petite Ceinture. The prefab structure relies on recycled materials as building blocks, which can be stacked together or taken apart depending on the needs of its occupants. Phobia Skyscaper with its crude, organic aesthetics easily reminds you of termite mounds—which still doesn’t explain the odd fear-inspired name. Apparently though, the eco-conscious modular concept is good enough for eVolo.
The thought-provoking Light Park Floating Skyscraper
Finally, Ting Xu and Yiming Chen from China take the Third Prize with their Light Park Floating Skyscraper. The unique concept building is suspended by a massive balloon at the top and propellers below—and with its parks and gardens, hopes to integrate green spaces into Beijing’s heavily industrialized areas. It’s an ingenious, thought-provoking structure that marries design with function.
Those are the winners from among the more than 600 entries sent in from all over the world. The various building proposals submitted range from the fantastically outrageous (jellyfish-inspired skyscrapers designed as pollutant sponge) to the strategically grand (a hexagonal network of buildings floating above the stratosphere and spanning the entire globe). Some are ahead of its time (morphing skins of buildings), while some are just downright out of this world (mobile buildings to be stationed in Mars designed to adjust the planet’s soil and atmosphere properties for human colonization).
Jellyfish-inspired, pollutant-absorbent structures
Many of these concept buildings have built-in eco-consciousness in them, attempting to address various environmental issues such as global warming, clean energy, ocean garbage, air, soil, even noise pollution. They might seem far-fetched right now, but at least they’re not just sticking a bunch of trees on top of their roofs just to have a semblance of eco-friendliness.
All of the entries in the 2013 Skyscraper Competition are undeniably groundbreaking, and more importantly their concepts are founded on science—so maybe in the near future, one of those concept buildings just might see the light of day.
First started in 2006, the eVolo Competition recognizes “outstanding ideas for vertical living.”
