AADRL Studio Schumacher, Project Skyscape.

The studio’s extrapolates from recent urban concentration processes, assuming a further intensification. Ecological challenges like climate change in general and rising sea levels in particular also point to the wisdom of further urban densification because a sprawling urbanisation is much harder to protect.
Densification is also mandated by the transformation of cities from industrial centres to knowledge and innovation centres where the collaborative integration of self-directed, creative labour processes mandates the full exploitation of colocation synergies in hyper-dense, permeable urban fabrics.
The proposal envisions a new high-rise district between the City of London and Canary Wharf, straddling both sides of the river. Four teams, each with four architects simulate the potential for a multi-author urbanism that generates a legible order and unity across a highly differentiated 3D urban fabric. The project assumes the hegemony of tectonism as precondition for achieving the required density of differentiation and correlation.