Imagine if Central Park was buried into the ground and a horizontal skyscraper was built all around it. The skyline of New York City has been rethought thanks to the winning entry in the 2016 Evolo Skyscraper Competition… copy: “new york horizon,” a horizontal “sidescraper” conceived by two young designers living in new york city, jianshi wu and yitan sun, was chosen as the first prize winner of the 2016 evolo skyscraper competition. the competition attracted 489 entries from all around the globe. The excellent concepts that “redefine skyscraper architecture via the deployment of innovative technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations” are recognized and awarded with this prize on an annual basis. Instead of constructing a traditional skyscraper by building upwards, the “new york horizon” project envisions a new paradigm by digging downward to central park’s bedrock. This will reveal the park’s rugged natural terrain (going back to its origins 150 years ago), while also creating a continuous wall of skyscrapers around its periphery to house habitable spaces (apartments, retails, museums, libraries, and so on) with unobstructed views of the new underground park. As a consequence of this, the wall of skyscrapers or megastructure would be approximately 300 meters tall and 30 meters wide. This would result in the creation of approximately 18 square kilometers of habitable indoor space, while also adding more natural diversity and verticality to the previously flat central park. It is intended that the dirt that is taken from the park would be utilized to add a more dynamic landscape (minimountains, hills, etc.) to undeveloped plots all over Manhattan in order to establish a new urban state in which the newly created landscape will become an integral part of the city. It is intended that the primary circulation cores, which will be elevators, would line with each and every street between 59th and 110th street in order to transport people not only down to the park but also to a variety of other levels. This will adhere to Manhattan’s city grid. Secondary circulation, such as ramps and stairs, would be used to link individual rooms of varying proportions to the cores of the building. According to sun and wu, the objective of their innovative approach is to invert the conventional interaction that exists between architecture and the natural environment. The natural environment is now the focal point of the development, rather than being created artificially as a distant, flat landscape to surround and enhance particular architectural structures. Even though it is very improbable that any of the submissions to the Evolo competition were entered with the intention that they would one day be constructed, the participants’ level of excitement has not been dampened in the least by this fact. According to wu and sun, “we feel that it is the original thinking that is behind these designs that is significant.” They also argue that “the most abstract conceptions might contain the germ of a visionary idea that would otherwise never be uncovered.” To see the photographs on indiaartndesign.com, please click here.
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