Before you get all worked up, I am not hosting another design competition here on Life of an Architect … yet.
I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition or even eVolo for that matter, so let’s start there. eVolo is an architecture and design journal focused on technological advances, sustainability, and innovative design for the 21st Century. Their objective is to promote and discuss the most avant-garde ideas generated in schools and professional studios around the world. It is a medium to explore the reality and future of design with up-to-date news, events, and projects.
In short, a cool magazine.
They also are in their 8th year of hosting a fictional skyscraper design competition that is simply amazing. In short, there are no restrictions in regards to site, program or size. The objective is to provide maximum freedom to the participants to engage the project without constraints in the most creative way. What is a skyscraper in the 21st century? What are the historical, contextual, social, urban, and environmental responsibilities of these mega-structures? This is where your imagination can run wild …
There are few competitions that I look forward to seeing the results but the skyscraper competition from eVolo is one of them. Even if you are an anti-competition person (I’m on the fence to be quite honest – depends on the competition) I love the graphics that get generated by the entrants and find the concepts behind some of the entries extremely plausible (if not their actual execution … but that’s not really the point of this particular competition).
Take a look at the 3 winning entries from last years competition, as well as 10 designs that received an Honorable Mention. Clicking on each image will bring you to the eVolo site where you can read about the concept behind each design as well as see further images.
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eVolo Magazine is pleased to invite students, architects, engineers, designers, and artists from around the globe to take part in the eVolo 2013 Skyscraper Competition. Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious awards for high-rise architecture. It recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the implementation of novel technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations along with studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. It is a forum that examines the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the skyscraper and the community, and the skyscraper and the city.
The participants should take into consideration the advances in technology, the exploration of sustainable systems, and the establishment of new urban and architectural methods to solve economic, social, and cultural problems of the contemporary city including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure and the exponential increase of inhabitants, pollution, economic division, and unplanned urban sprawl.
The competition is also an investigation on the public and private space and the role of the individual and the collective in the creation of a dynamic and adaptive vertical community. It is also a response to the exploration and adaptation of new habitats and territories based on a dynamic equilibrium between man and nature – a new kind of responsive and adaptive design capable of intelligent growth through the self-regulation of its own systems.
There are no restrictions in regards to site, program or size. The objective is to provide maximum freedom to the participants to engage the project without constraints in the most creative way. What is a skyscraper in the 21st century? What are the historical, contextual, social, urban, and environmental responsibilities of these mega-structures?
eVolo Magazine is committed to continue stimulating the imagination of designers around the world – thinkers that initiate a new architectural discourse of economic, environmental, intellectual, and perceptual responsibility that could ultimately modify what we understand as a contemporary skyscraper, its impact on urban planning and on the improvement of our way of life.
Schedule
- June 25, 2012 – Competition announcement, registration begins, acceptance of questions.
- November 5, 2012 – Deadline for submitting questions.
- November 13, 2012 – Early registration deadline
- December 3, 2012 – Answers to questions posted on website
- January 15, 2013 – Late registration deadline
- January 22, 2013 – Project submission deadline (23:59 hours US Eastern Time)
- March 11, 2013 – Winners’ announcement
Jury
Vincent Callebaut [principal Vincent Callebaut Architectures]
Giacomo Costa [visionary artist, author: The Chronicles of Time]
Julien De Smedt [principal Julien De Smedt Architects – JDS]
Hernan Diaz Alonso [principal Xefirotarch, Graduate Programs Chair at SCI-Arc]
Mathias Hollwich [principal HWKN, founder Architizer]
Ed Keller [principal aUm Studio, Associate Dean at Parsons New School of Design]
Marc Kushner [principal HWKN, founder Architizer]
Francois Roche [principal R&Sie(n) architecture, professor at GSAPP Columbia University]
Roland Snooks [principal Kokkugia, professor at GSAPP Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania]
Dongbai Song [winner 2012 Skyscraper Competition]
Tuuli Sotamaa [principal Sotamaa Design, designer at Alessi]
Kivi Sotamaa [principal Sotamaa Design, Director at Aalto Digital Design Laboratory, Professor at UCLA]
Tom Wiscombe [principal Tom Wiscombe Design, professor at SCI-Arc]
Hongchuan Zhao [winner 2012 Skyscraper Competition]
Zhi Zheng [winner 2012 Skyscraper Competition]
Awards
- 1st place – US $5000
- 2nd place – US $2000
- 3rd place – US $1000
Winners and special mentions will be published in several print magazines including eVolo_07
Registration
To register to the competition please go to http://www.evolo.us
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