“CHINESE FAKE MOUNTAIN” TOWER FINISHED

 

 

previous proposal

Verticality is what makes skyscraper a unique typology from any other programs. Paradoxically, the development of skyscraper has always been the discourse on variations in plan, rather than in section. Each skyscraper is a vertical city composed by disjointed layers of urban life, yet physically, those layers are artificially connected through single means of infrastructure.

This project questions the typology of skyscraper in a topological point of view: whether it is possible to organize program vertically, by different attractors in space? As this project proposes, the dispersed vertical gardens are the attractors in the complex. The collective nature of the garden, along with the alienation of soft-scape in a hard-scape surrounding, has given the garden a singularity that attracts crowds, in different directions, to flow into the space. While the garden is encapsulated by programmatic activities around it, the programmed spaces are isolated from one another by the garden, yet inwardly face the garden, as if the garden is infinite. The dialectic, between garden and program, tights the program cluster together. Various attractor gardens set up an abstract field for the emergence of new urban life. Skyscraper could also be a wonderland.

As program clusters—the cells—are grouped in abstract relationships, infrastructure waves through the spaces between different clusters and tight "the cells" together in a biomorphic way. The infrastructure is composed by: structure that holds up the skyscraper, hybrid circulation that combines ramp, stair, escalator etc, completed with floating light wells that travel from road network on the ground, to the top of the skyscraper. The relationship between infrastructure and program is no longer "plugged-in," as what mega-structure has manifested, but "intertwined," as recent mega-form projects present. In a way, this project is about a new typology in mega-form: could mega-form be skyscraper?

With the growth metaphor being the logic for this project, an analogy is created between the exterior of the project and any given nature setting. The transition between the nature and the inhabitable could be seamless. The project could also be sited in a metropolis, as a contrast that artistically reminds us about the oddities in our daily life.

 

CREDIT: JIYUAN ZHANG