Since the unveiling of the Chicago Home Insurance Building in 1885, the skyscraper—this new architectural typology—has captivated the human imagination. Skyscrapers are both a product of necessity, as the global population shifted towards cities during the Industrial Age, and a manifestation of desire, as architects sought to explore the possibilities unlocked by technological advances.
With a growing majority of people worldwide now living in cities, the future is undeniably urban. As land becomes scarcer, communities will increasingly economize space by building vertically. Advancements in construction and technology continue to push the boundaries of how high we can build. Yet, amid the relentless race to reach new heights—driven by real estate speculation due to limited land and the pursuit of prestige for creating ‘the tallest’—one critical question remains overlooked: should we? As buildings rise ever higher, the social fabric of communities is stretched thinner, effectively confining people within vertical suburbs. Thus, the question developers, builders, and architects should be asking is not “can we build higher?” but rather, “how can we shape and connect spaces to create genuine vertical communities?”
Tatiana Bilbao Studio’s proposal seeks to reconcile vertical urbanization with a tower typology that can embody the civic character of a city. Cities are not the result of a singular vision but rather patchworks of spatialized historical layers. The project reflects this by subdividing the tower into 192 plots and inviting collaboration from fifteen studios—each responsible for designing their own plot while maintaining a connection to adjacent sections. Each contributor brings a unique vision to the design of the tower and the construction of the city, resulting in not just a vertical sculptural mass, but a three-dimensional matrix of possibilities.
Collaborators statements and short biographies
Max Von Werz
This proposal recombines diverse patterns of vertical circulation in form of a monolithic stair that transcends its simple function of connecting, generating a varied architectural promenade that encourages leisurely exploration and contemplation.
Max von Werz founded his practice in 2012, working in the field of architecture at a variety of scales with a particular interest in urban planning as well as projects related to the contemporary arts field.
T–O
T–O’s Housing raise the question of how can we provide a flexible system that allow multiple families to co-exist and expand within vertical limitations.
T–O’s FabLab is a self-quote to Tatiana's Tower: A mini Model Tower surrounded by a scaffold that invites the visitor to climb, work and peep in a vertical workshop.
T–O is the architectural workshop established in Mexico City leaded by José Amozurrutia and Carlos Facio. The alliance between the T and the O is born from the faith in dialogue, between architects and citizens, between complementary ideas and collective work.
GSAPP
Columbia GSAPP’s students are no strangers to frantic, super-dense urban conditions. We have no choice but to collaborate with our colleagues on whom we are, often literally, vertically stacked. Our entries for (Not) Another Tower pay tribute to these delirious delights of New York City: where extremely diverse scenes and programs are allowed to coexist shoulder-to-shoulder, where epic monuments and industries become background scenery for the normal everyday hustle, where bleeding-edge innovation is so saturated as to be taken for granted.
The Fabrication Lab is Columbia GSAPP’s analog/digital production facility, as well as a classroom and laboratory for the student body. The Fab Lab supports all making endeavors from design inception to final production, as well as serving as a clearinghouse for the ideas that may not have the space, equipment, or capacity for mess available in studio. The Fab Lab has one faculty manager and is otherwise run and maintained by over thirty student crew.
Only-If
What is a contemporary monument? Our proposal is an inversion of the circulation space found in the base of Trajan’s Column. The monument becomes not a fixed urban object, but rather an unfolding sequence of movement and public space.
Only If is a New York City-based design practice for architecture and urbanism founded in 2013. When approaching any project, the studio focuses on fundamental questions and potentials. The ambition of this process is to envision simple gestures and forms that impose structure, coherence, and identity.
MMX
Geometry and structure are the main elements defining space. Systems of aggregation where the simplest repetition of a structural component yields a great variety of spatial conditions and hierarchies.
MMX was established in 2010 by Jorge Arvizu, Ignacio del Río, Emmanuel Ramírez and Diego Ricalde. Its practice, a collaborative multi-disciplinary team based in Mexico City, focuses on design processes across a diverse range of scales.
Javier Sánchez Arquitectos
Taking advantage of the vertical urbanization we extracted spaces that conform a traditional house, interpreting them in terms of needs and goods to turn them into common services that allow them to best fill these needs in collective ways.
JSa works with collective processes to achieve communal strategies at distinct scales. We learn from context, work pragmatically and adapt to social, environmental and urban changes. Since 1996 the studio has built a vision to reconvert, rehabilitate, restore, reinsert, and re-densify cities. We consider JSa to be part of a continuous learning process of investigation, working with clients, and developing projects.
Taller Tornel
The project responds to the necessity to make an atypical space within a totality – a type of rebellion in this spatial experiment. This place of colored walls and half-moon shapes plays out in our imaginations. Chromatic lines give the sensation of entering a minimalist gallery from the 70s.
Taller Tornel is an art and architecture production workspace established in 2012 which creates works across a variety of mediums that express complex ideas through simple formal moves and material honesty.
Fernanda Canales
How to Live in a Tower puts into question standard types of vertical housing which don’t address the fluid nature that exists between different floor levels and between the inside and the outside; what is personal and what is collective.
Fernanda Canales earned a PhD in architecture from the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid as well as a master’s degree from the Escuela Técnica of Barcelona. Her work has received numerous awards and she is the author of several books on architecture.
[RAW] Design
Towers have not been designed for our inner child... or our actual children. This Kinder-Grid echoes the structure of the larger tower yet at a child’s scale. It introduces spontaneous play, learning and interaction to this new, vertical environment.
[RAW]Design is a collaboration between Rebekah and Adam Wagoner. The firm was founded in 2009 to realize a new restaurant concept in the middle of Kansas.RAW Design works within all scales and typologies and strives to create meaningful space that is rooted in a larger architectural narrative. The firm is currently based in Denver, Colorado.
Solomonoff Arhcitecutre Studio
Art is not a privilege for a few, but a constant common and popular search to transcend our finite lives.
The integration of artistic expression is not a luxury, but rather, an integral proposition that allows us to live closer and better together.
Proactive Investments in housing, culture, art, education and sports offer better financial returns than reactionary measures in policing, hospitalization, remediation or incarceration.
SAS/Solomonoff Architecture Studio is a New York based award-winning design firm lead by Galia Solomonoff. The firm straddles art and architecture and has collaborated with over 50 international artists. The work ranges in scope from adaptive reuse to new construction, and in scale from art installations, to homes, to large museums. SAS works to integrate design concepts with clear construction detailing to deliver projects that are precise and poised.
Escobedo Soliz
This proposal recombines diverse patterns of vertical circulation in form of a monolithic stair that transcends its simple function of connecting, generating a varied architectural promenade that encourages leisurely exploration and contemplation.
Escobedo Soliz is an architecture studio established in Mexico City in 2011. Its practice is based off the search for a continuous aesthetic-ethic, where design processes are as important as the final result.
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