Foreword
Competition organisers
Official Partners
The purpose of the SKYHIVE Skyscraper Challenge is to generate design ideas for iconic high rise buildings in cities around the globe. Architects, design students, engineers, and artists are challenged to submit proposals that question the potentials of high-rise construction, to redefine skyscraper design with new technologies, materials, programs, forms, facade solutions and other tools.
The competition is organised in collaboration with Manipal Executive Education (MEE), a leading provider of corporate and executive education solutions in the Middle East and Africa. The winning entries will be showcased at the Manipal University Dubai School of Design & Architecture campus during its annual Global Tall Building Studio, a five-day workshop where architecture students and industry experts discuss and develop new concepts for the future of high-rise structures.
Dubai is the ideal centre for such a discussion, as the world's testing ground for experiments in high-rise construction. Since the stabilisation of the world economy in the 1990s Dubai became a financial centre for foreign trading communities - following key political alignments and a global increase in oil prices Dubai began a large-scale reinvention of its infrastructure. The city today is home to more than 900 high-rises, 88 taller than 180 metres, and 18 above 300 metres. The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest man-made structure at a height of 829.8m.
The SKYHIVE is an open architecture ideas competition, with few design restrictions: participants are free to interpret the brief as they choose. Proposals are not constrained by site, program or height. To place emphasis on the need for towers to recognize issues of density, the submitted design is requested to be limited to a site of 130x80m.
Submitted projects touched on issues of globalisation, sustainability, design adaptability, digital trends, and developing concepts in engineering. Each of the winning projects shows an ambition to rewrite the definition of the 21st-century skyscraper. The jury evaluated entries based on a number of factors, including sensitivity to the environment, potential to serve as a landmark, analysis of form, and creativity. They found that entries proposed a wide variety of structural themes, materials, and facade and typical floor plate design. Bee Breeders would like to thank each entrant and team for for their participation.
PLEASE NOTE - COMPETITION RESULTS CHANGED FEBRUARY 18, 2018 [read more here]
+158 points Buildner University Rankings!
Jury feedback summary
The design resolves a large site by dividing the volume into two towers, reducing the monumentality of the high-rise with a porous and organic form. Each tower is further fragmented into three semi-opaque vertical elements connected by spaces in transparent glass which allow daylight to reach the core, and permit outward views surrounding the proposed Hong Kong site. The towers are connected at mid-height by a sky-bridge and each features a dense rooftop garden open to the sky. The method of how the proposed design meets the ground plane is unclear, but given the facade porosity it seems feasible for the building to have positive interaction at the street level. The entry shows great potential for becoming a beacon of sustainable design.