Skyscrapers of the Future

Vertical Prison

Water Purification Skyscraper


Evolo Architecture Magazine has announced the winners of their 2010 Skyscraper competition. The entries were graded in the following categories: globalization, sustainability, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. Their first place winner designed an elevated prison and their second place winner designed a building that acts a water purifying system.

First Place Winner:

The first place was awarded to the architecture students Chow Khoon Toong, Ong Tien Yee, and Beh Ssi Cze, from Malaysia. Their design is a vertical prison that enables inmates to have their own city in the sky. The structure will ideally increase the inmates pride in their community while they support the city below by working in agriculture fields and factories.

The question that remains in my mind is, who would want to live in a city with a huge prison above them? The various times of day will project shadows down onto the populous as a constant reminder of the criminals above. Yet, this ability for the criminals to directly impact the production of their city below will provide a better chance for the inmates to assimilate back into their communities after they are released. Depending on the cultural context, this idea has a lot of potential to reverse the negative connotations towards prisons.

In my opinion, this architectural concept merely exaggerates MVRDV’s Wozoco, a senior citizen apartment building in Amsterdam. Wozoco’s design cantilevers sections of the building from the main structure in a way that offers natural lighting to more apartments and increasing the square footage without taking up more land.

Second Place Winner:

Inspired by the polluted Ciliwung River, The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a working structure that collects and cleans the water from the river through its three-layers. The building aims to provide living quarters and workspace, eliminating the slums that currently exist along the riverbeds.

Designers Rezza Rahdian, Erwin Setlawan, Ayu Diah Shanti and Leonardus Christnantyo from Indonesia offer a sophisticated response to water pollution. But, instead of pumping water from the river up through the structure to clean it, this idea has the possibility to operate with a much simpler approach. The three-layered building of a water spine, green layer and wind turbine combined with solar reactors is a innovative concept that can be applied to all built structures. A green layer alone will help clean our water of any smog or atmospheric pollution before hitting the ground’s surface. Eventually, I foresee wind turbines and solar reactors becoming a part of the canon of construction, making our built environment more self-sufficient and less destructive of natural resources. And finally, the designer’s invention of a water spine that collects and filters water can be implemented as a strategy to prevent water waste and flooding during heavy rains. As our climate undergoes drastic changes from human activity, unexpected natural disasters will continue to rise. Inventing a way to manage and efficiently use water by preventing wasteful runoff is an aspect of construction that our current builders lack.



The structural engineering of both of these buildings pose quite a challenge. The vertical prison claims to hold agriculture fields, factories, and an entire workforce of employees and inmates in what appears as 8 supporting steel trellises. Similarly, the Ciliwung Recovery Programs proposes a water reservoir on the top level of the building. In order for these concepts to become reality, both need to focus more on the process of engineering.