Verticality, Environment, Urbanism–2

Recently have been announced the winners of the 2017 Skyscraper Competition. The award was established in 2006 to recognize outstanding ideas for vertical living. The competition is 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. These ideas, through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way to understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.

HONORABLE MENTION

The Scaffold of Babel

Yutan Sun, Tongda Xu, Luojia Zhang, Dinglu Wang, Tianjun Wang

China

Background

Since the industrial revolution, production fuels the capitalism and consumerism, the big cities and skyscrapers become possible. And this was when workers began to play an important role in this complicated social system. Due to the height they need to work at, construction workers are viewed as one of the most dangerous professions now, not to mention in early days when security measures were less efficient. They are risking their life building our cities when architects and city planners seem to take all the credit.

Ironically, the construction builders are underpaid, surviving at the bottom of the society. As our cities sprawl over the land, the confrontation between the worker class and upper social classes has become sharper than ever. The luxurious skyscrapers take up the urban space, while the constructers of these buildings end up in city corners or even homeless. They have laid every piece of brick in the city, yet were driven away from the kingdom they built by high prices and other urban problems. Seldom do they have a chance to live a city life.

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