Team Leader : Mr. Ruifeng LIU

Team Member : Anna REZNIK and Adela MANEA.

"Within the future tendency of global urbanization and technology progress skyscraper cities will become a common landscape but in the context of today's economic, ecological and energy crisis the challenge is to design large scale buildings that are adaptable and responsive to different environmental conditions

Due to population growth and need for functional and spatial diversity cities have become higher and higher. Reaching high altitudes buildings step into extreme environmental conditions. For this reason this proposal is inspired from marine animals (octopus, jellyfish, squid, sea sponge and anemone) that live in difficult natural environment. This way, adaptive characteristics of sea inhabitants (transparency, flexibility, movement, protective pigmentation) become outlines for building's shape and envelope achieving environmental integration by using nature's resources (sun, air flow, water, vegetation).

Using sea sponge as reference for its unique structure to use water flow as living source the building has a wind tunnel to use air flow as power source. The shape of the building itself is a huge wind tunnel mechanism that uses its height and, consequently, environmental conditions to create air flow that sets in motion large wind turbines.

Buildings envelope is an integrated system with several layers that provide energy and protection to support a comfortable environment for its inhabitants. First layer is a semitransparent polymer membrane that stretches under wind pressure without loosing its elasticity. This causes a wave dynamic that sets in motion a large number of pistons, integrated in the structural grid, transforming mechanical energy into electrical energy. Sun energy is used by the second layer. Umbrella sunshades covered with photovoltaic cells, and sensors that make them respond to different sunshine intensity create not only a functional and comfortable environment for inhabitants but also the aesthetics of the building.

To summarize, our future urban skyline will be made from multiple high-rise buildings that adapt to environmental conditions and use specific local resources in an integrated mechanism similar to living organisms."