See the Final Booklets 2018-19

_{“The Solar Strip” by Deniz Demir and Pim Jatuphat Sunsaneevithayakul, featuring the in-between spaces that not only act as renewable enery sources,
but also provide an elevated social gathering venue in the neighborhood.}

As the ever-changing skylines of cities across the world show, tall buildings are an increasingly important solution for accommodating sustainable growth in today's urban areas. However, is the tall building truly a sustainable building type? Can tall buildings really reduce carbon emission, and harvest enough energy to become energy/carbon-neutral? In addition, what is their full impact on the city and the lives of its inhabitants by developing skyward? What support mechanisms and urban infrastructure are required for such growth? Tall buildings have largely been considered as high energy consumers, but the potentials of saving energy and using renewable energy, especially in an urban realm, have never been fully explored. For example, each stratified elevation of a tower has the opportunity to draw from the differing characteristics of both the physical city and external environment, which can vary widely with height. Wind, sun, rain, temperature, and urban grain are not the same within a 360 degree orientation of a building plan or 360 meters of building height. The tall building needs to both recognize, and draw opportunity from, these varying characteristics.

This year-long studio conducted a research in order to develop a typology of net-zero skyscrapers that integrate the maximum number of relevant sustainable design strategies and technologies, not only in terms of carbon but also in terms of internal environment, building community and the impact of the building on the physical, social and cultural realms. Semester 1 embraced abstracted skyscraper designs based on significant research. Semester 2, which also included a week-long overseas field trip to Shenzhen, China, applied the learning to a specific, and real, site in an existing urban context.