25 Futuristic Skyscraper Designs That Will Blow Your Mind

25 Futuristic Skyscraper Designs That Will Blow Your Mind

Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the use of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, along with studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. This is also 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. The award seeks to discover young talent, whose ideas will change the way we understand architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.

The first place was awarded to Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song from China for their project “Himalaya Water Tower”. The proposal is a skyscraper located high in the Himalayan mountain range that stores water and helps regulate its dispersal to the land below as the mountains’ natural supplies dry up. The skyscraper, which can be replicated en masse, will collect water in the rainy season, purify it, freeze it into ice and store it for future use.

The second place was awarded to Yiting Shen, Nanjue Wang, Ji Xia, and Zihan Wang from China for their project “Mountain Band-Aid”, a design that seeks to simultaneously return the displaced Hmong mountain people to their homes and work as it restores the ecology of the Yunnan mountain range.

The recipient of the third place is Lin Yu-Ta from the Taiwan for a “Vertical Landfill” to be located in the largest cities around the globe, both as a reminder of the outrageous amount of garbage that we produce and as a power plant that harvests energy from waste decomposition.

1.      Himalaya Water Tower

First Place

2012 Skyscraper Competition

Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao, Dongbai Song

China

Housed within 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya Mountains sits 40 percent of the world’s fresh water. The massive ice sheets are melting at a faster-than-ever pace due to climate change, posing possible dire consequences for the continent of Asia and the entire world stand, and especially for the villages and cities that sit on the seven rivers that come are fed from the Himalayas’ runoff as they respond with erratic flooding or drought.

The “Himalaya Water Tower” is a skyscraper located high in the mountain range that serves to store water and helps regulate its dispersal to the land below as the mountains’ natural supplies dry up. The skyscraper, which can be replicated en masse, will collect water in the rainy season, purify it, freeze it into ice and store it for future use. The water distribution schedule will evolve with the needs of residents below; while it can be used to help in times of current drought, it’s also meant to store plentiful water for future generations.

2.      Mountain Band-Aid

Second Place

2012 Skyscraper Competition

Yiting Shen, Nanjue Wang, Ji Xia, Zihan Wang

China

Industrialization and mining are destroying China’s natural settings, especially mountains, which are excavated to the point of destruction in man’s search for minerals. These processes don’t just devistate regions’ ecologies; they also displace whole populations of people, separating them from their homes and also their means of living, as many in these rural areas work as farmers. The “Mountain Band-Aid” project seeks to simultaneously restore the displaced Hmong mountain people to their homes and work as it restores the mountain ecology of the Yunnan mountain range.

This is achieved with a two-layer construction project. The outer layer is a skyscraper that is built into and stretched across the mountain. By building the structure into, and as part of, the mountain, the skyscraper helps the Hmong people recover their original lifestyle. It is organized internally by the villagers to replicate the traditional village design they utilized before they were displaced. The building’s placement on the mountain means that its height is mainly determined by the height of the mountain. The design as a whole is one of “dual recovery:” the Hmong people living on the damaged mountain can keep the unique organization of space in their village, recreating it within the skyscraper, but they won’t be contributing to the mountain’s degradation. Instead, they help the mountain’s environmental restoration by recycling domestic water for mountain irrigation. It is this irrigation system that comprises the project’s inner layer: an irrigation system is constructed to stabilize the mountain’s soil and grow plants.

3.   Monument to Civilization: Vertical Landfill for Metropolises

Third Place
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Lin Yu-Ta, Anne Schmidt
Taiwan

The designer of the “Monument to Civilization” asks you to reconsider what constitutes ‘spectacular.’

Skyscrapers are meant to wow, to impress. But other things within cities are also impressive, the designer says: “New York, for instance: If we put its annual garbage on a area of a typical tower footprint, we’ll get a 1,300 meter high landfill tower, which is about as three times tall as the Empire State Building (450 meters). Isn’t that spectacular?”

As landfill possibilities surrounding growing metropolises disappear and cities fight waste management issues, the power of trash needs to be reconsidered. The accumulation of waste, for example, actually creates potential energy-recycle opportunities, such as when gas is emitted during decomposition. The Monument of Civilization proposal suggests locating trash vertically in a tower and using the energy generated from its decomposition to help power the surrounding city. By locating the tower in the heart of the city, energy is provided in immediate proximity, and money is also saved in transportation costs when garbage no longer needs to be shipped out of town.

4.      Citadel Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Victor Kopieikin, Pavlo Zabotin
Ukraine

Natural disasters, the threat of technological meltdown and even the possibility of visitors from space all present a need for cities and even countries to reorganize to implement infrastructure that can protect people from possible catastrophes.

The “Citadel Skyscraper” project is imagined for Japan because of the numerous natural and manmade disasters that have struck the region in recent years. The project proposes a three-part implementation of new structures with an end result of protecting the island with a fortress-like defense shield. The first part involves a restructuring of the land use of all of the country’s major cities as residents are moved out of the city proper. Businesses and commercial endeavors will stay located within the cities, but residents will move out to sea and live in self-supporting residential skyscrapers, or citadels. The second part specifies the location of these citadels: They will be lined up as a single “sheet”, creating a barrier 2-3 km from the shoreline that can protect the mainland from tsunamis. The skyscrapers themselves are connected by a system of breakwaters and drainage channels, and are able to withstand waves up to 50 meters tall. These are further bolstered by a connected series of fiber sails, buried as deep as 1,200 meters, that surround the island. When the waves hit the sails and meet the oscillations of its stretched fibers, such a dissonance is created that the wave is reduced to nothing

5.      Occupy Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Ying Xiao, Shengchen Yang
United States

Moved by the economic disparity in the United States brought to light by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, the designers of the Occupy Skyscraper propose creating a building that can further empower protesters and accelerate the Occupy movement. The temporary Occupy skyscraper can be erected on any protest site to provide shelter and meeting spaces for dissenters. By providing a means for protesters to take their movement from a horizontal plane to a 3-D vertical reality, the Occupy skyscraper strengthens and bolsters the event as a whole, but amazingly, it does so only using hemp rope and canvas.

The skyscraper’s construction begins as soon as a protest takes place: Ropes are woven into a vertical web by attaching to and climbing nearby buildings. The webs are woven thicker and thicker until they form nets that can support weight. At this stage, the “building” can be used for climbing, hanging flags and supporting sleeping bags in the vertical spaces, and can be used for gatherings on the horizontal plane. Canvas is then attached to create solid paneling to segregate space uses within the building. The designers envision several designated areas: orientation spaces, and other spots for recreation, sleeping, workshops, conferences, rallies and large meetings

6.      Folded City

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Adrien Piebourg, Bastien Papetti
France

How to live vertically? Building higher and higher does not seem to change the way we live. Most people wish to live in single-family residences, but the problem is the lack of diversity and density. How to have the benefits of suburbia combined with the intensity of living in the city?

The history of the skyscrapers goes back to Elisha Otis, who invented the elevator in the 19th century. This invention promoted the conquest of the sky with projects competing for prowess and size.  What would happened if within a house the elevator is used as a remote control to move from one floor to another, from one program to another?

This new “object” would challenge the function of living. The house becomes smart and incorporates multiple applications – one application per floor. The elevator is for the house what that Internet is for a smart-phone. A necessary parameter! Now you can “zap” your life spatially. Imagine yourself in your room, put on your slippers, go in your elevator, and zap! You will be in your living room, your garage, your favorite bar or business place; the park where you go jogging!

The new tower is born, or rather, the first cell. We must now find the idea of “Tower”. This cell is only anecdotal, but multiplied and intensified, it marks its existence. It is now clearly identifiable as an “object”.  The idea of “Tower” is inseparable from the idea of city, so we have now an object in the city, which looks like a city.  Perceptions are distorted. The object in the city became literally the “city-object”

7.      Migrant Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Damian Przybyła, Rafał Przybyła
Poland

The “Migrant Skyscraper” is literally mobile: A giant, thin tire with a building and green space in the center, this skyscraper is ready to roll.

The concept behind this structure is that in an unstable world, people need the stability of self-sufficiency to truly be free, and the future of the architectural field can help provide that to people. By constructing a safe haven for residents to live in that ensures they will have food to eat and water to drink, the Migrant Skyscraper affords people freedom despite what natural and social disasters may come. The building-inside-a-wheel can stay stationary for however long residents please, but, for example, if political upheaval destabilizes a region, residents can fire up the biofuel-powered engine and cruise to a new location.

The structure’s exterior tire is clad in recycled rubber. Inside, two buildings and surrounding green space provide everything residents need to survive, making the tire-encapsulated unit completely self-sufficient. Outside of the buildings there is space for agriculture, including crops and livestock; within the tire, plumbing systems circulate potable, gray and black water for drinking, waste facilities and irrigation.

8.      House of Babel: Post-crisis Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

MADETOGETHER – Nikita Asadov
Russia

The race between countries, cities, and corporations to construct the highest structure is a challenge of pride and power. Our technological advances allowed for the construction of super-tall buildings – the higher they are, the more space they loose and the harder the engineering challenge becomes. The global financial crisis was the last decisive argument against such structures.

The House of Babel offers a radical revision for the common method of building a traditional home. With the help of aerostatic construction we can eliminate extra floors and elevate the building to almost any desired height. The post-crisis skyscraper is the house consisting of two floors connected with a high-speed elevator on a thin heavy-duty cable.

9.      Plastic Fish Tower

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Kim Hongseop, Cho Hyunbeom, Yoon Sunhee, Yoon Hyungsoo
South Korea

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean sits a mass of garbage that is 8.1% the size of the entire sea. It is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), and is estimated to contain over 100 million tons of waste. The debris gathers in that particular location as ocean currents convene in the Subtropical Convergence Region, and is causing grave harm to the immediate ecosystem and those within a broad surrounding swath.

The Plastic Fish Tower, a circular structure floating on the ocean surface within the GPGP, will collect and reprocess plastic, which estimates say comprises 90% of the GPGP and is often ingested by birds and fish, causing their demise. A large fence will circle the structure underwater in a 1 km diameter to capture all the plastic that floats its way. The plastic will be recycled within the structure and processed into plastic patches that can be assembled into fish farms to restore the ecosystem. In addition to helping mitigate the pollution, the fish farm will also have two added benefits: the buoyancy of the plastic fish farm elements will be enough to keep the entire structure afloat since plastic is in fact so buoyant, and it will position the structure as a tourist attraction. Bringing tourists to the GPGP would greatly help in disseminating widely the reality of this manmade ecological catastrophe. The tourists will be transported to and from the site by ships that are fueled by chemicals that will be collected from the processed plastics within the skyscraper in an as-of-yet-undiscovered method of chemical extraction.

10.  New Tower of Babel

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Maciej Nisztuk
Poland

In an era where mega-structures threaten to strip man’s needs and the humanity of architecture from new buildings and the field as a whole, the “Tower of Babel” seeks to do the opposite, existing as a living monument to its creator and their aspirations. The building is perpetually “under construction” as the needs and wants of its creator evolve, allowing the monument to experiment with and showcase many architectural trends.

The skyscraper is a mutation of the Palace of Culture and Science, an enormous, landmark structure built in 1955 in the destroyed center of Warsaw, Poland (which was still ravaged from WWII). Although it is the most recognizable symbol of Warsaw, it is a controversial building, as it symbolizes, to many, Soviet domination and the enslavement of the Polish nation. A typical communist monument, it ignored the local architectural vernacular and good urban planning, and instead was built as a monolith to tower over the rest of the city.

11.  Mountain City

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Charly Duchosal
Switzerland

With today’s weight of cities on the landscape, we tend to lose our original relationship with nature. The cities are getting bigger, larger, and higher as the population increases and our connection to natural landscape is disappearing. Urban planners and architects have been trying to recreate nature in cities by drawing parks and planting trees on streets. The implementation of these “green parts” in cities has nothing to do with nature in its original state.

Instead of trying to force nature into the city, we should adapt the city to nature. For example, living underneath the earth allows us to preserve most of its surface. We know that verticality allows cities to face the increasing needs for density.

The design for this city is set in a wild landscape inside a mountain to preserve the development of nature around it. A geothermic plant is the logical solution to provide energy to the city. The main condition for this is that the city should be located in a geographic zone with high geothermal gradients – active tectonic and volcanic areas.

12.  Coal Power Plant Mutation

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Chipara Radu Bogdan
Romania

The incredibly destructive effects that coal plants cause to our natural environment are well documented and known, but 50,000 plants still operate the world over every day to power the planet, as green technology has not evolved to a point where they generate enough energy to replace fossil fuel processes. The “Coal Power Plant Mutation” project is a proposal for coal factory addendum, a skyscraper built over an existing factory that can reduce the amounts of harmful waste that spew from their chimney stacks while we wait for green technologies to take over.

The skyscraper coal cleansers are comprised of three long, tubular legs that join are built around the existing factory’s chimneys and meet high in the air to share a bio-filtering area that also has balloons to capture and hold waste particles. The structure is made out from multiple carbon-fiber steel props that are held together by a carbon-fiber steel mesh; the props are anchored in the existing foundation of the power plant. The chimneys rise 1,000 meters in the air; as the smokestack pollution rises through the tall skyscraper chimneys, tubes with various types of air filters with various densities are placed at different heights. The lower filters for carbon dioxide exhaustion use synthetic carbon fixation techniques, while filters located higher in the chimneys are bio-filters. , At the very top, the chimneys are equipped carbon and vapor capturing and filtering devices that keep the gasses from reaching the atmosphere. They are made of horizontal air pipes connected only to the exterior. The vapors condensate on them, and the resulting water is gathered and distributed back at the base.

13.  District 3: Skyscraper of Liberation

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Xiaoliang Lu, Yikai Lin
United States

On the borders of two regions at war, those who suffer the greatest are the citizens who simply want peace for their nation. Often, warring regions build great walls between them, but do such walls truly solve conflict? They don’t, say the designers of the “District 3 – Skyscraper of Liberation” project – instead, walls obstruct mutual understanding and intensify the discrepancy.

This project is imagined for the border of Israel and Palestine, which is defined by three districts: an Israeli district, a Palestinian district and a third, which is a zone where the borders are separated by a wall. This wall will be removed and replaced with a skyscraper, transforming the isolated and hate-filled area with one that is shared and fosters reconciliation. The skyscraper can only be entered by Palestinians and Israelis who are non-violent and seek peace and cooperation, and is administered by the United Nations.

14.  Bridge of Hope Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Mohammed Adib, Ivan Arellano, Jordi Cunill, Maria Teresa Farre, Christian Koester, Davide Roncato
Spain

The Bridge of Hope is a symbolic structure that seeks to link the shores of the Dead Sea to promote peace between Jordan and Israel. Construction of the bridge would commence from both sides of the sea, ultimately meeting in the middle; there, a settlement for Arabs and Jews to live harmoniously is established.

The water level of the Dead Sea is dropping by 1 meter per year, and plans are currently underway by the Jordanians to replenish the water levels by connecting it, via pipelines, with the Red Sea. In addition to the bridge’s construction, this project also proposes the creation of aqueducts from Israel’s side to help replenish the sea with water from the Mediterranean. These aqueducts would generate electricity as the water flow drops 400 meters; this electricity is used to desalinate the water, making it useable for irrigation purposes (residual water is discharged into the Dead Sea). Salt water pools  (with normal salt levels) are created within the Dead Sea for fish farming, and other pools are also created to cultivate mineral baths for a variety of uses (potash is used for fertilizer, Bromine for fire retardants, fresh water for hydroponic farming, Dunaliella bacteria for its high CO2 sequestration rate, etc.).

15.  Vertical Ground

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

George Kontalonis, Jared Ramsdell, Nassim Es-Haghi, Rana Zureikat
Greece, United States, Jordan, United Kingdom

The “Vertical Ground” project reexamines the “norm” for the organization of college campuses. Students today want proximity to the culture, activities and networks available in urban settings, but typical campuses are horizontally oriented and require large swaths of land for development, which are increasingly rare in desirable urban areas. By orienting a college campus vertically instead, colleges can locate in dense areas and perhaps even better facilitate social communication amongst students and faculty.

20,000 students are located on a campus complex that is comprised of several towers that occupy a small city footprint, and are connected at varying heights by sky bridges. By spacing programmatic needs properly throughout the towers, the vertically orientated campuses can give students both space for privacy and opportunities for dynamic interactions with others. The campus tower typology is composed of series of clustered departments and open spaces that are located amongst the college’s three schools: Applied Sciences, Design, and Social Sciences schools

16.  Airport Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

ZhiYong Hong , XueTing Zhang
China

Ninety-seven percent of Chinese airports will need to be rebuilt by 2020, according to a recent survey, causing huge implications for cost and land use issues, and the city of Beijing is currently planning the construction of a second airport. The designers of the AirPort propose avoiding using precious land for new airports by constructing one that is positioned 450 meters in the air. The airport sits atop the bases of dozens of thin towers that mushroom out at the top with wide platforms that all connect to support the runways and airport facilities on top. Locating an airport city so high in the air has many immediate benefits. Being so high up will mean that there won’t be height restrictions on the buildings erected on the platform, which will allow for great stimulation and creativity in the resulting development. Also, because wind speed is higher 450 meters in the air than it is at sea level, the length of the runway can be effectively reduced, saving space.

17.  Aakash Skyscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Lemire Abdul Halim Chehab, Suraj Ramkumar Suthar, Swapnil Sanjay Gawande
United Kingdom

Aakash, the Hindi word for “sky,” provides the inspiration for this project, which proposes locating floating clusters of development high in the skies above Mumbai, one of the world’s most congested metropolises.

The complex as a whole is comprised of tree-like structures that stem at nodes throughout the city, grow into the sky and then branch out into wide, floating modules that connect to create a road-less cityscape. The majority of the structural load is taken by cloud-shaped helium balloons; only some of the load is transferred to the ground by means of nodes.

18.  Cliff Dwellings

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

PLUG: Román J. Cordero Tovar, Eric Israel Dorantes, Daniel Justino Rodríguez, Izbeth K. Mendoza Fragoso
Mexico

Is it possible to develop a zero footprint construction? Is it possible to build while being part of the landscape?

For many years we have been developing unsustainable models that year after year are taking more natural landscape and resources to satisfy the necessity for grow.   The typical skyscraper offered the chance to have a small footprint in order to have more free horizontal space, but at the end, if we build a lot of them we will end up with the same unsustainable model.

The main idea behind this project is to inhabit the natural vertical geographical conditions. The vertical plane with zero occupancy offers the possibility, with the help of technology, to conquest the apparently inhospitable wall areas in order to preserve the green horizontal plane exclusively for wild life. The cliffs are the new virgin territories to explore.

19.  Human Rights Skyscraper in Beijing

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Ren Tianhang, Luo Jing, Kang Jun
China

Illegal acquisition of land by local Chinese government entities has caused thousands of residents incredible grief and even death recently, plus social instability, say the designers of the Structure of Human Rights in Beijing. Though private property doesn’t really exist in China (and buying a property only ensures its use for 70 years), the designers of this structure feel that land use needs to be reexamined in China, as a private home is a basic human right. Their proposal to bring every person a place to live takes into account the country’s exploding population and need for dense development, and thus is oriented vertically.

20.  Noah’s Ark: Sustainable City

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Aleksandar Joksimovic, Jelena Nikolic
Serbia

Noah’s Ark is a self-sustainable city on the water that can support all living species, from humans to animals and fish to plants and trees, that have been evicted from land by natural disasters, warfare, whatever disasters the end days may bring. In addition to providing protection from these disasters, the Ark concept also addresses overcrowding on land: 72% of the earth’s surface is already covered by water, so extension of the urban city grid onto water is both logical and useful, as solar, wind and wave energies are easily captured at sea, and it is these natural energy sources that will power the development.

It is designed as part of a network consisting of other Arks, which connect with floating underwater tunnels and the main land. As the settlements grow, the Arks can attach to each other, creating one big artificial mainland from a series of artificial islands.

21.  Tundra City

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Pavel Sipkin
Russia

Tundra City is located in the exhausted diamond mine “Lucky” which is the geographical center of the entire Russian Tundra – the last point of urbanization of the Russian North.

The tundra is an unexplored region, which hardly anyone wants to go. It is associated with a “hole” due to poor living conditions. The Russian government has paid attention to the prospect and huge potential benefits of developing the region to the whole the country. This has been facilitated by the existing geopolitical threat posed by the rapidly development of China, India, and other countries.

Tundra City is a launching pad to address the problems of the region: population, development of infrastructure, creation of new industry, agriculture, science, and culture.

22.  GreenGru Airportscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Gerasimos Pavlidis
Greece

Inspired by the towering cranes found in big cities, the 380 meter-tall GreenGru skyscraper provides public transportation via air to residents of metropolises with traffic problems or airports located far from the core. It also works as an energy station, generating enough power from within to run its own systems and light up some of the surrounding city as well.

The building’s name capitalizes on the energy creation inside, a process the designer’s have dubbed “Artificial Photosynthesis Installation,” explaining the “green.” “Gru” is the Italian translation of “tower crane,” the basis of its look.

The tower’s mast is made of carbon-nanotube-reinforced steel, with large concrete counterweights underground for stabilization. The building’s façade, inspired by twisted rubber bands, is made of graphite, which is ten times stronger and six times lighter than steel. The graphite is covered in a polymeric carbon dioxide-absorber called zeolight, which lowers carbon dioxide levels during the night; sunlight exposure during the day allows the molecules to float away. This means the exterior of the building creates a greenhouse effect inside, making the environment excellent for growing plants.

23.  Oceanscraper

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Hui Chen, Luying Guo
China, United States

Constructing a building that floats in the ocean has inherent benefits, the main boon being buoyancy. Locating a structure in the sea allows the possibility for massive complexes to be constructed without the restraints of gravity, opening possibilities for great architectural experimentation.

Enter “Oceanscraper,” a design for a cone-shaped underwater city complex. The Oceanscraper has a large “bowl” in the center to allow daylight to reach the depths; surrounding the bowl is a ring of living space. Submarines dock into the living space, and residents remain inside, creating a community of submarine apartments. This mobility affords freedom for residents and also allows each city complex to shift rapidly, if need be. Submarines are free to navigate both within the bowl and outside of the complex, and can dock collectively in themed groups, such as submarines that are performing research, or those that are hosting tourist groups, etc

24.  Tehran Tower

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Mahdi Kamboozia, Alireza Esfandiari, Nima Dehghani, Mohammad ashkbar sefat
Iran

Tehran, Iran’s largest city and its capital, is plagued by extreme air pollution, 80% of which is caused by auto traffic. Amongst its 8.5 million residents, it is estimated that 27 people die daily from pollution-related diseases, showing the tangible and deadly dangers that result from the traffic caused by urban sprawl. To combat this reality, the designers of the Tehran Tower propose building up, locating massive skyscrapers within Tehran to house masses of residents centrally.

Demolishing unimportant old buildings will create space both for the two legs of the large tower, which is connected above ground to create a wide building expanse, and for green space that will make the urban expanse as a whole more livable. By designing a tower with two legs that connect above ground, precious land is saved from development: the skyscraper occupies just 1,200 square meters of land versus the 30,000 square meters a typical tower would need for development. Each tower provides 1,200 housing units

25.  Floating City

Honorable Mention
2012 Skyscraper Competition

Wei Zhao
China

天上人间 (Tian-shan-ren-jian – Heaven and Earth) is the physical manifestation of the traditional Shanshui painting, which aims to reach the ideal lifestyle.

Earth, with 7 billion people, is continuously increasing her load with three new babies born every second. With limited resources, the rapid growth of population has caused many problems included environmental degradation, ocean acidification, ozone holes, lack of fresh water, and constant loss of biodiversity.

The “Heaven and Earth” project is a utopia wonderland residing in the air. There are mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, and animals. It solves the problems that exist on Earth, including food, water, and housing.