Imagine you are tasked with creating an innovative skyscraper that takes into consideration historical and social context, the existing urban fabric, human scale, and the environment.  Your skyscraper design can take any height or shape on any site in the world, but it must be technologically feasible and environmentally responsible.  Any ideas?  Evolo Architecture held a skyscraper competition with the above constraints and announced three winners and six mentions.  Of those nine, Daekwon Park has received some attention in the last week.  It’s a pretty interesting concept.  I also like the escraper by Sohta Mori and Yuichiro Minato. 

Escraper connects three twisted buildings in a modern, but natural way.  It has six major green spaces or parks, as well as a mini garden on each level. 

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This is a concept tower by Popular Architecture envisioned for Tower Hamlets in East London.  The design is a reaction, at least in part, to sprawl issues.  London is expected to need housing for 100,000 new people per year until 2016, and currently, most of housing that’s being built is low-density projects in commuter towns.  Popular Architecture’s Super Tower could house up to about 100,000 people with a seriously low site requirement (considering the number of people within the structure). 

The 1,500 meter tall tower would have about 500 floors.  You’d find floors or sections for needs such as a university, farmer’s market, pubs, a town hall, sky gardens, etc.  Anything and everything would be in the building.  There’s even a fire station on the 419th floor!  Which raises the question: what do you do if there is a fire above or below the 419th floor? 

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It’s a story that I’m seeing more and more, although I’m not too sure we’re seeing a good thing.  Nissan USA spends $100 M to build a brand new office building and plans for LEED Silver certification, but in the end, they decide to spend certification cash on the wetland "rather than have a plaque on the wall."#  Certification gets dropped, but we should ask ourselves a serious question:  Is LEED certification merely about the plaque?  Is that the only benefit we see from LEED?  Spending money to get a plaque?

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Anti-Smog is a prototype project envisioned for a post-industrial area of Paris that aims to invent a new architecture — auto-sufficient, depolluting architecture, reactive to its environment.  The Vincent Callebaut Architectures prototype relies heavily on building-integrated, green innovation such as vertical axis wind turbines, rooftop solar panels, and living walls and greenery.  The result is a design that not only borders on positive energy as a self-sufficient structure, but one that moves into a refreshing realm of natural architecture that can clean and replenish the surrounding air.

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• Greening of college campuses is a grassroots effort.
• Many unhappy with cluster subdivisions. 
• USGBC targets lodging industry with LEED-EB. 
• Green building windows can block cell signals.
• Green building saves on energy and water, uses recycled materials.

BONUS: Newsweek Project Green

• Sky’s the Limit: Green high-rises have better utilities + health benefits.
• Not Just for Treehuggers: Green homes are still red hot.
• Designing Light and Air: the new green Bank of America building.

*WIR = Week in Review; a Saturday showcase of excellent links.