“Light Park Floating Skyscraper”, skyscraper of Ting Xu and Yiming Chen

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The rapid increase of population within the major cities around the world has led to poor development and serious urban design problems, including the lack of infrastructure, housing, and recreational areas. In Beijing, a large portion of the historic center has been demolished.
One way to make scarce green and recreation space available to residents of this crowded city is a skyscraper that floats above the land, taking new development to the sky. The Light Park stays afloat thanks to a large, mushroom cap-like helium-filled balloon at its top, and solar-powered propellers directly below. Programmatic platforms that host parks, sports fields, green houses, restaurants, and other uses are suspended from the top of the structure by reinforced steel cables; the platforms fan in different directions around the spherical vessel to balance its weight. These slabs are also staggered to allow for maximum exposure to sunlight on each level.
Translucent solar panels cover the top of the vessel to power the uses below, and water collectors, also located at the top, direct precipitation towards filters that send clean water throughout the structure.
Though it doesn’t completely solve Beijing’s serious traffic and overpopulation problems, the Light Park can return valuable green space to the public, and also help mitigate the pollution that comes with increased development – with parks and plants floating in the sky above the city, the air is partially cleaned.

Fonte: eVolo

“Polar Umbrella Buoyant Skyscraper”, super-structure for the prevention of future depletion of Derek Pirozzi

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Polar Umbrella Buoyant Skyscraper Protects and Regenerates the Polar Ice Caps
During the last decades of global warming, the polar ice caps have experienced a severe rise in temperature causing the northern and southern ice shelves to become thin, fractured, and melt into the ocean. Rebuilding the arctic layers is the primary objective of this proposal which cools down the Earth’s surface by reducing heat gain in vulnerable arctic regions.
The Polar Umbrella’s buoyant super-structure becomes a statement for the prevention of future depletion of our protective arctic region. Through its desalinization and power facilities, this arctic skyscraper becomes a floating metropolis equipped with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) research laboratories, renewable power stations, dormitory-style housing units, eco-tourist attractions, and ecological habitats for wildlife. A series of these structures would be strategically located in the most affected areas.
Salt water is used to produce a renewable source of energy through an osmotic (salinity gradient power) power facility housed within the building’s core. In addition, the structure’s immense canopy allows for the reduction of heat gain on the arctic surface while harvesting solar energy. The umbrella’s thermal skin boasts a series of modules that are composed of a polyethylene piping system that pumps brackish water. Finally, the Polar Umbrella also regenerates the ice caps using harvest chambers that freeze the ocean water.

Fonte: eVolo

“Stratosphere Network of Skyscrapers”, modern skyscraper of Mingxuan Dong, Yuchen Xiang, Aiwen Xie, Xu Han

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As technological innovative and higher latest skyscrapers can be, they still need to rely on the support to the ground. So a higher heights usually means more unstableness as well as weaker capacity to resist disasters.
The project proposes a mega hex grid that evolves around the earth circumference at a stratosphere heigh, the principle that support this hypothesis is that it seem to be that in a building the larger the span is, the scale and the unstableness will proportionally increase. But if the span is large enough within the scale of the earth, the unstableness brought by the size decreases inversely. In this case the network of buildings and bridges connected to each other, covering the entire circumference of the earth, will no longer need structural ground support and can be suspended in the air by the effect of the earth gravity. The elevated bridges and buildings that relate the grid can reach any height with out worrying about overturning, earth-quakes, floods and any other natural disasters.
The earth needs to find a environmental balance. As human over-used the resources the earth is being heavily damaged, eventually approaching to a point in which the earth will be unsuitable for human living.
The modern skyscraper has represent for years the modern urban ideal. But in a non far future the booming population increase will be a catastrophic, being the stratosphere grid the only platform for ensure the continuity of human civilization.