eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of its 2015 Skyscraper Competition and, as is the case every year, the final designs are pretty eye-catching and ambitious. The competition, which was launched almost a decade ago, was designed to “challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.” This year, eVolo received 480 submissions and has selected 3 winners and 15 honorable mentions.
First place went to Essence Skyscaper, a proposal by the Poland-based team called BOMP, that squeezes 11 natural landscapes—including a swamp, jungle, waterfall, cave, and even an ocean—into one tall building. The landscapes “are meant to form an environmentally justified sequence open to the public that includes extensive open floor plans that form spectacular spaces with water floors, fish tanks lifted up to 30 meters above ground, and jungle areas among others natural scenarios,” explained the team in a statement.
Second place was awarded to Suraksha Bhatla and Sharan Sundar from India for their Shanty-Scaper which would provide housing to the fishermen living in the slums of Chennai. “The vertical squatter structure predominately is comprised of post-construction debris such as pipes and reinforcement bars that crucially articulate the structural stability,” said the team. “Recycled corrugated metal sheets, regionally sourced timber & thatch mould the enclosure of each dwelling profile and lend to their vernacular language.”
And Egor Orlov from Russia got bronze for his very hypothetical, and constantly evolving, Cybertopia proposal that blends the digital and physical worlds. “‘Tomorrow’ we expect a completely different topography of the city,” he explained. “It will be a map which includes cyber worlds with intrinsic geography, laws of physics, qualities and even its own residents. It is as though landscapes of computer games have woven into the city space becoming its integral part.”
Check out renderings of the 15 honorable mentions below—and for more information on each of them, head over to eVolo’s competition website.
