Last year, eVolo Magazine announced its annual Skyscraper Competition which is "one of the world's most prestigious awards for high-rise architecture." Recently, the contest's winners have been announced. The top three prizes went to those who came up with the concept of a redesigned Central Park, a skyscraper for drones and a tower made of data servers.
In its announcement of winners, eVolo said that the first place went to Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu from the US, whose project is titled "New York Horizon." Their design concept proposes a skyscraper in the middle of Central Park that's higher than the Empire State Building. The property would include housing units with sumptuous views of the park. Architectural Digest also reports that the design includes lakes as well as highly reflective glass on the sides of Central Park, making it seem like it has no physical boundaries.
The second place went to the project titled "The Hive," which is a skyscraper meant for drones. Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, and Chengda Zhu, also from the US, said that their design is meant for personal and commercial use. The skyscraper will serve as a control terminal for the drones in New York City.
The third place went to Valeria Mercuri and Marco Merletti from Italy. Called "Data Tower," their project involves a skyscraper made up of data servers that can store information from various firms around the world. The project is envisioned to be in Iceland as its cold temperature can contribute to the eco-friendly maintenance of the servers.
Beside the top three winners, 21 honorable mentions were also chosen from the 489 projects in the competition. According to its site, eVolo Skyscraper Competition "recognizes visionary ideas for building high- projects that through the novel novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments."