Bee Breeders Announces Winners of SKYHIVE Skyscraper Challenge

The SKYHIVE 2019 Skyscraper Challenge is the second annual architecture competition intended to generate design ideas for iconic high rise buildings in cities around the globe. As part of this design series, participants are encouraged to incorporate new technologies, materials, forms, spatial organizations, and construction systems in their designs for a skyscraper.

The SKYHIVE is an open architecture ideas competition. Participants are given a brief with few restrictions on site, program, or height. Placing emphasis on the need for towers to respond to issues of density, the submitted design is requested to be limited to a site of 130×80 meters.

Submitted projects focused on a range of topics. Each submission was judged based on the elements of its design that were deemed innovative. Proposals that questioned or built upon the standards of high-rise construction, as well as those that considered economic, social, and cultural impacts, were judged positively. Special consideration was given to proposals that implemented innovative sustainable systems. In accordance with the competition brief, the jury also evaluated each entry based on its potential to serve as a new architectural landmark within its chosen geographical region.

Bee Breeders would like to thank the participants for their design submissions. This second annual SKYHIVE competition built upon last year’s imaginative examinations of the relationships between skyscrapers and the natural world, the community, and the city.

Below we have published the three winners, including the BB Green Award:

First Prize Winner & BB Student Award

Mobius Tower – Landscape in the Air / Ka Wah Francis Cheung

Courtesy of Bee Breeders

Second Prize Winner

Coscienza Intuitiva / Federico Fauli

Courtesy of Bee Breeders

‘Coscienza Intuitiva’ is meant to serve as a new form of public space and as a project constantly undergoing transformation. Located in the historic Italian city of Palermo, it is designed as an amalgamation of elements, typologies, materials, and languages. It depicts a tower of fragmented ruins. Through a series of precise drawings, it is formed by stacking historical architectural elements to form a vertical repository of culture and identities. The tower is meant to both display and be supported structurally by fossils of the city, a city that is never complete, but forever undergoing an architectural, cultural, and symbolic evolution.

Third Prize Winner

Tesseract: Time Based Home Ownership Incentivisation Model / Bryant Lau Liang Cheng

Courtesy of Bee Breeders

‘Tesseract’ is a model evolutionary tower addressed to incentivize home ownership. The concept proposes an architectural system that allows residents to take part in the design of their own units as well as the design of the programs within the building. Therefore the exact form of the tower is dependant on the specific users it attracts over time. Residents choose their preferred amenities and common spaces, and the building is therefore customized to reflect an unique identity. The submission includes an accomplished vertical section that describes well the intended variety of spaces such a building might contain. The jury was positive about this intended variety more so than its depiction of a common unit interior, which it found to be rather banal given the project’s aspirations for form.

BB Green Award

Machina: Air Colonnade / San Yoon Minjae Koo

Architecture Competition SKYHIVE 2019 Skyscraper Challenge Green award winners – San Yoon and Minjae Koo

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the Green Award winners of our “SKYHIVE 2019 Skyscraper Challenge” competition – San Yoon and Minjae Koo from Korea!

Courtesy of Bee Breeders

We both attended the Korea National University of Arts studying a Bachelor’s in Architecture and graduated in the same class of 2017. San is moving to NY this fall to attend Cornell University for his Master’s degree, and Minjae is currently working at an architectural studio.

We used to work in the same studio (Minjae is still working there) after graduation that focuses on designing small-scale housing. While in that studio, we often took a part as coordinators of districts nearby the studio to make the physical conditions of the town suitable for daily base users.

WHAT DOES ARCHITECTURE MEAN TO YOU AND WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AN ARCHITECT IN YOUR SOCIETY?

Architects in Korea have limited roles in society due to the regulations and unfamiliarity of this job by the public. Even though the life of an architect in Korea is not so pleasant and the job is not quite respected, we pursue our career in architecture to change today’s circumstances and make tomorrow better. We contribute by depicting unconventional architectures that break into the daily life of people and arouse questions. So we can say the meaning of architecture is in an ‘experiment’ for us.

WHY DO YOU PARTICIPATE IN ARCHITECTURE VISION COMPETITIONS?

We believe that this kind of gesture makes reality better. Architects who work in the field have limited time to think about diverse ideas. Participating in architecture vision competitions does have a lot of value in terms of studying and learning different perspectives, getting away from the frame of reality, and also providing examples for others.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO INDIVIDUALS WHO STRUGGLE TO DECIDE WHETHER IT WOULD BE BENEFICIAL FOR THEM TO PARTICIPATE IN ARCHITECTURE VISION COMPETITIONS?

We’d say not to struggle. Architecture vision competitions sometimes might not seem as important as the buildings that are actually being built. But there are many different values and paths in architecture. By putting your effort into something like this can let you do more than what most people are used to. This might be the only thing that won’t be controlled or limited because it doesn’t require professors, employers or clients. We believe this action is beneficial for an individual in any way even though one might not win.

Article courtesy of Bee Breeders