The Architecture of the City

Mexican design firm Studio Cachoua Torres Camilletti has designed and developed an ambitious concept that reimagines skyscrapers. 

The concept skyscraper, which is meant to be located in Hong Kong, is 92-stories-high and consists of two parts—for housing and for commerce that are linked by bridges for vehicles to transport commuters around the building itself. 

Aside from its fascinating structure, the architects also have an unusual plan to install rice paddies on the roof of the commercial side of the skyscraper. Additionally, they also proposed to use nuclear energy to power the building. 

Office space, retail shops and lifestyle amenities will occupy most of the commerce area, making it extremely convenient for residents. 

One of the architects, Adrian Cachoua Oropeza explained that “the farming on the top of the building is an important symbolic gesture as well as an environmental one,” as rice is a staple in Asian countries. 

This idea was submitted for the 2014 World Architecture Festival. 

This conceptual skyscraper for Berlin has a twisted figure-of-eight structure that curves around elevated gardens and greenhouses.

Agnieszka Preibisz and Peter Sandhaus, architects based in Berlin, developed the design to contribute to a new masterplan being put together for the eastern quarter of the city.

Describing the building as a "vertical garden city", the architects have planned a network of gardens and greenhouses that would slot into the two hollows of the figure-of-eight, intended to serve a growing desire among city dwellers for self-sustaining gardening.

Daylight is a highly cost-effective means of reducing the energy for electrical lighting and cooling. Education often reduces the aspect of daylight to eye-catching effects on facades and scarcely discusses its potential effects – not just on cost, but on health, well-being and energy.

This Light Matters will explore the often unexplored aspects of daylight and introduce key strategies to better incorporate daylight into design: from optimizing building orientations to choosing interior surface qualities that achieve the right reflectance. These steps can significantly reduce investment as well as operating costs and so much more...