eVolo Magazine has announced winners for its 2020 Skyscraper Competition, which invited architects, students, engineers, designers, and artists from around the globe to take part in the 2020 edition. 

Established in 2006, the annual competition recognizes visionary ideas that through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments. 

First prize was awarded to Epidemic Babel designed by D Lee, Gavin Shen, Weiyuan Xu, and Xinhao Yuan from China. "Epidemic Babel" envisions a rapid-deployment healthcare skyscraper for epidemic outbreaks. The building consists of a steel frame in which pre-fabricated programmatic boxes would plug-in according to specific demands. 

Yutian Tang and Yuntao Xu from The United States won the second prize with their Egalitarian Nature project. The proposal imagines a man-made vertical park for recreational activities within high-density urban areas accessible to all its inhabitants.

Coastal Breakwater Community designed by Charles Tzu Wei Chiang and Alejandro Moreno Guerrero from Taiwan received the third prize. The project envisions a vertical housing community for fishermen in St. Louis, Senegal where rising sea levels have forced the inhabitants to move inland. The proposal is inspired by the traditional wooden architecture- a system of pillars, arches, and tensile structures.

World Architecture Community's editor-in-chief Berrin Chatzi Chousein will also be taking part in the jury for this edition, as well as Alper Derinboğaz, Founder, Salon Architects, Jürgen H. Mayer, Founder, J. Mayer H. and Partner, Architekten mbB, Manuel Navarro Zornoza, Principal, Latitude Architectural Group, Michael Neumann Principal, Synn Architects, Ryuichi Sasaki, Founder, Sasaki Architecture and Lu Yun, Founder, MUDA Architects.

The jury selected 3 winners and 22 honorable mentions from 473 projects received.

See the three winning projects with their short project descriptions below:

Images © D Lee, Gavin Shen, Weiyuan Xu, and Xinhao Yuan

First prize: Epidemic Babel by D Lee, Gavin Shen, Weiyuan Xu, and Xinhao Yuan from China 

"The Epidemic Babel is a rapid-deployment health care skyscraper designed as a response to the current Coronavirus pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China. The project takes into consideration that an epidemic outbreak is usually fast, leaving no time for governments and policymakers to react. Under these harsh circumstances, a weak healthcare infrastructure will soon be torn apart turning the epidemic into a deadly catastrophe.

The Epidemic Babel features two very important advantages: simple construction and rapid response. The entire building consists of a steel frame with several functional boxes with a very small footprint. The building pattern is simple enough that any qualified construction team can have it ready in five days. Once the steel frame is erected, the healthcare team will choose the appropriate functional boxes to be attached to the steel frame. This building pattern allows the skyscraper to respond to the outbreak in a very short time and relieve the burden of the existing health care infrastructure. All the programmatic boxes are pre-manufactured in factories and need no extra time for construction. The lightness of the frame and boxes also makes it easy to transport to remote locations. Compared to the temporal hospitals currently built in China, the Epidemic Babel is faster to construct and potentially less expensive."

Images © Yutian Tang and Yuntao Xu

2nd prize: Egalitarian Nature by Yutian Tang and Yuntao Xu from The United States

"The Egalitarian Nature skyscraper imagines a new building typology driven by the human urge for nature instead of capital. It is a new kind of infrastructure conceived to serve the whole society.

The traditional skyscraper is reimagined as a mountain range that provides a new way to experience nature within an urban environment. A zigzag-climbing path is developed along with abstract spaces that encourage an unexpected engagement between people and nature. Accessing the tower is not decided by capital but individual physical strength."

Images © Charles Tzu Wei Chiang and Alejandro Moreno Guerrero

3rd prize: Coastal Breakwater Community by Charles Tzu Wei Chiang and Alejandro Moreno Guerrero from Taiwan

"St. Louis, Senegal, located in the northwest part of the country, near the mouth of The Senegal River, has been home to fishermen for generations. It is a hostile territory where there are constant confrontations with the neighboring countries regarding the established fishing boundaries and territories. In addition to the political and social problems, the region is affected by the rising sea level. Such natural phenomenon has forced the community to move inland, away from the shore.

This proposal is based on traditional pillar structures, which are used to prevent erosion. These structures will serve as a foundation for the new vertical housing units. The project is also inspired by Senegal’s traditional wooden architecture that uses a complex arch system with tensile structures. The system allows a high degree of adaptability and extendibility to create a new community by the sea challenging the rising sea level."

See 22 Honorable Mentions on eVolo's website. 

eVolo Magazine is committed to continuing 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.

Top image: Epidemic Babel by D Lee, Gavin Shen, Weiyuan Xu, and Xinhao Yuan from China. 

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