The Habitat
2011 eVolo skyscraper DESIGN competition
international Design competition SPRING 2011
THE EVOLO 2011 SKYSCRAPER COMPETITION Launched in 2006 by eVolo Magazine, the annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious awards for high-rise architecture. The competition recognizes outstanding ideas that look to redefine what we understand as a skyscraper through the initiation of novel technologies, new materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations along with studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. Taking into consideration these multilayered elements, the contest serves as a forum that examines the relationship between the skyscraper and the natural world, the community, and the city in hopes to generate and experiment with ideas that potentially modify and improve our way of life within a dynamic and adaptive vertical community
The Habitat
2011 eVolo skyscraper DESIGN competition
international Design competition Richard Rivera | SPRING 2011
Site The Habitat is placed in the dense urban fabric of New York City, a busy metropolitan characterized by tall buildings that rise vertically into the open sky. The Habitat sits above the New York City High Line Park, a once abandoned thirty foot freight line that has been rejuvenated into a hip and urban green promenade that zigzags through Manhattan’s Meatpacking and Chelsea Districts. This specific site was selected to maximize the working effort between the zoo and the park below, and to provide the large population surrounding the area with maximum natural benefits
High Line
Design Concept
skyscraper paradigm
Skyscraper Architecture
For many centuries, the wild habitats of animals have been and continue to be destroyed or fragmented for agricultural use and new city construction; animals in-turn search for new territory to roam or face extinction. When Mother Nature begins to reclaim her land, humans and animals are forced to live co-dependently and ecologically together in a vertical urban community
A characteristic of skyscrapers is its verticality towards the open city. However, as skyscrapers continuously get taller and taller, there becomes a disconnect to the ground plane. New York City’s High Line – once a bustling [now] abandoned piece of city infrastructure recently revamped into a new spirit – is an original approach to fashion an elevated green, forming some balance in a skyscraper dominated concrete jungle
An elongated snake-like form merges the water street landscape with the new zoo habitat itself – an ecological building containing essential programs for energy collection, recycling, and distribution. Functioning as a zoo, the concept behind the design is for the structure to take advantage of all energy it collects and produces. It then distributes that energy to power the city life around it
The Habitat trials with two typologies: zoo architecture and skyscraper. The design solution is a novel urban hub that provides the new dynamic city opportunities for eco-chic practices to fuel and improve the way humans and animals live
The zoo envelope is articulated to resemble a cocoon with a bird’s nest texture. The lower portion is densely expressed to support the weight of the animals from the branch-like columns. The mesh disperses where there is less tension.
LESS TENSION
MORE TENSION
Perforations created by branching to be utilized for ventilation and lighting.
Sketches exploring the idea of a “push-pull” building envelop.
The Habitat
eVolo skyscraper DESIGN
column
floor plate column
While the skin and bones of a building are composed of floor plates supported by columns, the prominent zoo-scraper structure redefines the expression of these basic components. A push-pull articulation transforms the traditionally tall and rigid skyscraper building into a horizontal structure with an organic and undulating form. This introduces The Habitat to the benefit of sustainable practices in a modern ecochic: the undulating building form encourages a chimney effect while the aperture skin of the building filters daylight and natural ventilation. Like the intricate infrastructure of train networks concealed beneath busy New York City, the zoo’s unique structural and dynamic building enclosure will conceal an intertwined grid of HVAC, multi-transport lifts, and waste recycling distribution systems between the street level, the urban park and the zoo-scraper
150 ft tall
Skin+ Bones
a traditional building While the skin and bones of a building are composed of floor plates supported by columns, the prominent zoo-scape structure redefines the expression of these basic components
push
pull
e
transformation
tree nest zoo
transport
sun + wind
water recycling
A push-pull articulation transforms the traditional box to correspond to the horizontal and vertical requirements of the animals housed within the structure
The zoo’s unique structural and dynamic building enclosure will conceal an intertwined grid of HVAC, multiuse transport lifts, and waste recycling distribution systems between the street level, the urban park and the zoo-scape
Visitors will be carried to the zoo-scape by elevators tucked inside the columns. Larger columns will accommodate for animal and service lifts
Daylight and wind percolates through the perforated facade. The dimples and cones will release heat using the chimney effect. Apertures open and close based on climate
Rain water will help irrigate plant life, via network of conduits interwoven within the structural skeleton
The Habitat
eVolo skyscraper DESIGN
a new ecoscraper The design of The Habitat not only towers over tree canopies of its parkscape, or blends itself with the backdrop of super tall buildings. Like a stroll along the High Line, The Habitat gives visitors a new atmosphere of viewing animals as well as the city from a different vantage point 150 feet above street traffic
A
B
C
D
short sections
at various aspects of the elevated zoo to illustrate the interior articulation. Sections can be referred back to the longitudinal section elevation diagram above.
A
B
C
D
section elevation
of the elevated zoo at New York’s High Line.
eco-chic zoo the habitat
+150.0
high line
+30.0
street +0.0
E
The zoo-scraper’s principle green practice is the waste distribution (nutrient recycling) to the park landscape below the structure. The park’s vegetation will in turn become feed for the animals housed in the zoo
Oou! I think the baby elephant is pooping! Did you know poop is a good fertilizer for the plants on the High Line?
birds eye view
of a portion of the elevated zoo at New York’s High Line, with renderings of the structural enclosure.
elephant poop collection
th for dis anim trib al utio wa n ste
drinking water pool
the habitat
pa
+150.0
high line
Sketches exploring the idea of a “push-pull” building envelope.
+30.0
street +0.0
E
The Habitat
eVolo skyscraper DESIGN
Look dad! The giraffe is taller than the Empire State Building! Yes, it is! The zooscraper has an amazing view of our city!
The Habitat
eVolo skyscraper DESIGN
Various perforation studies for designing the building envelopes
Cut-out perforations
Mesh strands
Rainwater will help to irrigate plant life via a network of conduits interwoven within the structural skeleton. Daylight and wind percolates through the perforated faรงade. The dimples and cones of the building will release heat using the chimney effect. Apertures open and close based on climate conditions. The outer skin-like layers are photovoltaic and adjust to the energy needs of the area within and below to generate electricity for the zoo and the city
The Habitat
eVolo skyscraper DESIGN