One of the most anticipated annual design challenges just revealed the top entries of this year's edition: 3 winners and 22 honorable mentions were selected from 473 submitted projects at the 2020 EVOLO Skyscraper Competition.

The winning teams from China, the United States, and Taiwan successfully challenged the established understanding of vertical architecture and proposed a rapid-deployment healthcare skyscraper for epidemic outbreaks, a vertical park for recreational activities within high-density urban areas, and a vertical housing community for fishermen in climate change-stricken St. Louis, Senegal.

First Place: Epidemic Babel: Healthcare Emergency Skyscraper
by D Lee, Gavin Shen, Weiyuan Xu, Xinhao Yuan (China)

Project Description: "The Epidemic Babel is a rapid-deployment health care skyscraper designed as a response to the current Coronavirus pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China. The project takes into consideration that an epidemic outbreak is usually fast, leaving no time for governments and policymakers to react. Under these harsh circumstances, a weak healthcare infrastructure will soon be torn apart turning the epidemic into a deadly catastrophe."

"The Epidemic Babel features two very important advantages: simple construction and rapid response. The entire building consists of a steel frame with several functional boxes with a very small footprint. The building pattern is simple enough that any qualified construction team can have it ready in five days. Once the steel frame is erected, the healthcare team will choose the appropriate functional boxes to be attached to the steel frame. This building pattern allows the skyscraper to respond to the outbreak in a very short time and relieve the burden of the existing health care infrastructure. All the programmatic boxes are pre-manufactured in factories and need no extra time for construction. The lightness of the frame and boxes also makes it easy to transport to remote locations. Compared to the temporal hospitals currently built in China, the Epidemic Babel is faster to construct and potentially less expensive."

More project info here.

Second Place: Egalitarian Nature: Vertical Green Park For Urban Areas
by Yutian Tang, Yuntao Xu (United States)

Project Description: "The Egalitarian Nature skyscraper imagines a new building typology driven by the human urge for nature instead of capital. It is a new kind of infrastructure conceived to serve the whole society. The traditional skyscraper is reimagined as a mountain range that provides a new way to experience nature within an urban environment. A zigzag-climbing path is developed along with abstract spaces that encourage an unexpected engagement between people and nature. Accessing the tower is not decided by capital but individual physical strength."

More project info here.

Third Place: Coast Breakwater: Vertical Community In Senegal For Rising Sea Levels
by Charles Tzu Wei Chiang, Alejandro Moreno Guerrero (Taiwan)

Project Description: "St. Louis, Senegal, located in the northwest part of the country, near the mouth of The Senegal River, has been home to fishermen for generations. It is a hostile territory where there are constant confrontations with the neighboring countries regarding the established fishing boundaries and territories. In addition to the political and social problems, the region is affected by the rising sea level. Such natural phenomenon has forced the community to move inland, away from the shore."

More project info here.

Take a look also at the fascinating Honorable Mentions in the image gallery below.

The competition jury this year included Berrin Chatzi Chousein (Editor-in-Chief, World Architecture Community), Alper Derinboğaz (Founder, Salon Architects), Jürgen H. Mayer (Founder, J. MAYER H. and Partner, Architekten mbB), Manuel Navarro Zornoza (Principal, Latitude Architectural Group), Michael Neumann (Principal, Synn Architects), Ryuichi Sasaki (Founder, Sasaki Architecture), and Lu Yun (Founder, MUDA Architects).