Could the Skyscrapers of the Future Look Like Giant Umbrellas?

EVolo Magazine has selected the three winners of its annual competition to "recognize outstanding ideas for vertical living." 625 entries were received from 83 different countries.

1 minute read

March 18, 2013, 1:00 PM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


Ariel Schwartz shares the outlandish images of what the skyscrapers of the future might look like. According to eVolo Magazine, the competition organizers, the winning ideas were selected for their "novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, [to] challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments."

"Like the entries in years past, the 2013 winners and honorable mentions have little chance of being built any time soon--the technologies aren’t yet real," says Schwartz. "But in 50 years? The winning entry, a skyscraper that rebuilds arctic ice caps, might not seem so strange. On the other hand, it might look like futuristic predictions from the 1950s: a quaint idea of what the future may hold."

Monday, March 18, 2013 in Fast Company Co.Exist

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