This year's skyscraper design competition by the architecture and design journal eVolo produced some peculiar and exciting ideas as winners and honourable mentions were announced on 2 March. From the winning project - Himalaya Water Tower by Chinese designers Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song to mobile skyscrapers, underwater and floating cities, the competition showcased innovative and sometimes futuristic ways of looking at the future architecture of skyscrapers.
However, it was the recipient of the third place that really caught our eye. Monument to Civilization by Lin Yu-Ta from Taiwan proposes to start storing rubbish in towers within the city instead of landfills. Located in the largest cities around the world, the towers would be brilliant indicators of how much waste urban populations produce. The designer hopes that the towers would make cities compete with each other to produce the least amount of waste, revealed in having the lowest tower.
The designer estimated that if the annual amount of rubbish produced in New York was put in one of the towers, it would be up to 1,300m high - that's almost three times the height of the Empire State Building, currently New York's tallest building at 443.2m.
However, the designer also proposes that storing rubbish this way would create opportunities for energy production to power the surrounding city and would also reduce the transport costs that are currently associated with disposing of the rubbish in out-of-town sites.
The towers would have recycling and waste-water processing facilities, gas and power stations, a temporary dump and a waste-water tank with a solid-waste tank in the centre.
eVolo's annual skyscraper competition is in its sixth year with an aim to give young creatives the chance to redefine the design and architecture of tall buildings through the use of modern aesthetics and technologies.
