Future cities could include pancake-shaped buildings, power plants that harvest lightning and ocean-based skyscrapers that produce potable water and clean up trash. Those are some of the visions in the 2011 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, a forum for futuristic — and even fantastical — ideas for new architecture.
Click here to see the winning designs and some other interesting entries.
Hosted by the architecture magazine eVolo, the competition is meant to stimulate discussion, development and promotion of new concepts for vertical density. Participants are asked to examine the relationships among the skyscraper and the natural world, the community and the city.
The top three awards went to designs that focus on the environment, whether it's through cleaning polluted air or re-imagining one of the marvels of the modern world, the Hoover Dam. A host of honorable mentions include environmental cleanup facilities, sustainable communities and even subterranean communities for the living and the dead.
Click through to the photo gallery for some of the highlights from this year's competition.
