Futuristic city design takes park views to a new level
In one futuristic vision of New York City, the landscape of Central Park would be radically transformed and thousands more people would be able to see it from their windows. Two designers from the United States have conceived of a plan that would create seven square miles of housing that wraps around a sunken Central Park.
Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu's concept, titled New York Horizon, is a horizontal skyscraper built around the entire perimeter of Central Park, after the park is excavated to a depth far below street level. The design won first place in eVolo Magazine's 2016 Skyscraper Competition, an annual contest for architects around the world to design buildings of the future.
The 1000-feet tall, 100-feet deep skyscraper they envisioned would be built into a sunken Central Park, with the soil dug out to reveal the underlying natural bedrock. According to the designers' plan, the soil removed from the park would be relocated to neighborhoods throughout the city to add to other parks and structures.
The design calls for a glass facade to cover the building. "With its highly reflective glass cover on all sides, the landscape inside the new park can reach beyond physical boundaries, creating an illusion of infinity. In the heart of New York City, a New Horizon is born," their plan states.
Sun and Wu said that their design would make Central Park accessible to more people on a regular basis.
eVolo Magazine's annual award recognizes novel skyscraper ideas that challenge our concept of architecture and the way it is integrated into the natural and built environments.
The second place winner of this year's contest is called The Hive, by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao and Chengda Zhu, also from the United States. The Hive is a high-rise terminal that acts as docking and charging stations for personal or commercial drones.
Their project page states: "This centrally controlled model will be more appealing to the legislative sector as it adheres to the concerns about regulating drone traffic. The primary location of the building does not only gather the commercial power of Manhattan, but also stands away from the no-fly-zones set by the FAA."