Students Kelton Minor, Derek Magee and Tiffany Carlson of The Danish Institute for Study Abroad have taken first place in Chicago Architecture Today’s 2011 International Mock Firm Skyscraper Design Challenge with their skyscraper proposal for Stockholm. Additional images of VOX‘s (the student’s mock firm) winning proposal in addition to a video and a description of the work can be found after the break.
The competition required us to imagine a new commercial skyscraper to be sited in Stockholm Sweden under the theme “Architecture that Works,” while developing a mock firm identity (VOX) and design process. Using lessons learned and insight gained from our daily movement through and analysis of the Scandinavian street, we proposed a vertical street typology as a potential solution to inject an interconnected public-private program into vertical space by continuing Stockholm’s local infrastructure.
Vertigata is derived from “vertical gata”, which means “Vertical Street” in Swedish.
Stockholm is a city with a thriving urban infrastructure, utilizing metros, trams, buses, and bicycles as the primary methods of transportation. The metro systems, as well as the classic Scandinavian walking street, are vital features of the city’s culture that encourage public engagement and support commercial activity. Stockholm’s citizens strongly identify with the city’s classic skyline consisting of industrial smoke stacks and church steeples and regularly reject high rise proposals that threaten to change the skyline’s appearance as seen from the old city (Gamla Stan).
The strategy for the submission follows Stockholm’s urban logic and addresses skyline sensitivities. First, on the interior, Vertigata is an extension of Stockholm’s horizontal infrastructure, utilizing two speeds of movement: a vertical metrovator that stops at each of the building’s primary public nodes in succession, as well as a vertical walking street, where inhabitants can shop, eat, and enjoy multiple points of interest along the way. By extruding the Scandinavian urban fabric, meandering public program is juxtaposed with commercial infill, creating an urban engine that facilitates interaction between diverse user groups. Vertigata’s exterior form is an example of anamorphosis; the building assumes different appearances from separate perspectives. When viewed from Stockholm’s old city center the skyscraper appears continuous with the smokestack strewn skyline, while appearing more dominant when observed from the city’s developing periphery.
