2015 international Student tall building Design Competition Winners

The 2015 International Student Tall Building Design Competition ran on the theme of "Global Interchanges: Resurgence of the Skyscraper City." The interplay with local culture is critical, as it not only adheres a project appropriately within a city, but communicates the values and imperatives of a place to a global audience. This communication can be meaningfully imparted in many ways – from building form, design inspiration, and motifs; to employed materials, technologies, and urban arrangement. Given the rise of international participation in the tall building world, we find ourselves at defining moment – where small decisions made today on a local scale can enable sweeping change worldwide. See more information on the five winners and projects below.

 

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1st Place

London Vertical Campus Complex  

Tianyi Geng and Teng Li, University of Nottingham

 

The site is separated by the railway into 2 parts, the Ludgate and the Samsons. The proposal design aims to connect both sites by creating a common podium, crossing over the railway to form a elevated park. This park can be easily accessed by pedestrian by the ramps and public stair. From there, people can enjoy an interesting green places watching over the Thames river. Around the study site are several educational institution, university and college. This becomes the inspiration to create a complex campus project. The podium is used for commercial purpose and cultural activity to enhance and exploit the flow of pedestrian.


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2nd Place

Nypa Palm Tower

Phuong Quan Trinh, Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture 

 

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is the most crowded city in Vietnam, and the city is experiencing numerous problems caused by recent climate change such as flooding, lack of green spaces and population booming. “Dừa nước” in Vietnam or Nypa palm is the distinctive plant grow in soft mud and slow moving tidal. This tropical plant grow quickly and strongly, bring the green to the wetlands and contribute an important part of Vietnamese culture. Vietnamese people use nypa palm for building their cottages, making conic hats, souvenirs and even traditional cuisine. Its shapes inspired to the structures and shapes of the building.


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3rd Place

Rethinking Domestic Life in Manhattan

Yutian Wang and Shiyao Liu, Harvard University GSD 

 

The moment is ripe to rethink the capacity of Manhattan grid to accommodate a significant increase in density and, in doing so, provide new alternatives for domestic urban life. Given the cost of land in and around Manhattan, it is only through a drastic increase in density that more accessible housing units can be introduced into the market. Beyond the introduction of additional units, a significant increase in FAR also allows us to question more general conventions of urban life. A new block configuration opens up a myriad of new relationships that can alter the conventions of urban life.


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4th Place

Scrap to Scraper

Suresh Pandiyan, Adhiyamaan College of Engineering

 

By piling up the living units high we get lot of free space form the entire 300 ha of Dharavi. These spaces could be used to rebuild the greenery the city has lost on its developing-building attitude and since Dharavi lies at the Heart of the Mumbai city the space attained could also be used to develop any common hub for the entire city satisfying the contemporary needs. Thus the new development could help achieve the requirements of the city and the community. The proposed development could accommodate around 9,000 people. This is how scraps are converted to skyscrapers and are lived in.


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5th Place

Invisible [Urban] Water Resivoir

Shengliang Rong and Erin Huang, Illinois Institute of Technology

 

We Proposed to build a skyscraper prototype called Invisible [Urban] Water Resivoir to collect, purify and store rainwater in order to help solving Taiwan’s water crisis in the near future. And we would be able to harvest the energy from high potential water through hydro-electricity generator to support those building's activity mentioned previously. We choose Taiwan's Kaohsiung city as our first testing site for three reasons: (i) Kaohsiung suffered the most from severe water crisis, experiencing at least 3 months' water supply limited and cutoff every year; (ii) Huge uneven precipitation seasonally, 90% rainfall in 5 months; (iii) Cannot relieve the water crisis through extracting ground water and river water.


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