world the term vertical city is a cliché. There's a strange way about working on big things for the sake of them being big. But it's not the scale in itself that's interesting, rather the possibilities it unleashes. But the scale confuses the stake: Is it about making the biggest building ever or understanding that at such a scale it is no longer about designing a building but really an entire city? We did quite a few wasted attempts until we realized that the task wasn't about fitting the surfaces on the site but rather to achieve a socially and logistically functioning vertical city. From that point on everything became more obvious. At least our mistakes were striking. We had to realize that to make a vertical city is not to make a tower! A city offers a complex set of social and spatial interactions while a tower offers one condition: an elevator to connect a series of repetitive floors. The elevator is the link to everything and therefore your only chance to meet anyone. For that reason we don't live in towers. We just occupy them for as little as we can then we rush out to wider horizons. If you use mechanically treated air, the shafts will be huge and in turn the developer will lose massive amounts of profitable square meters. In this project technology is an issue, and the ecological foot-print of such a tower is tremendous. Water cooling plus vast use of natural ventilation is the way to go. Optimizing area while minimizing the complexity of fixings, tall buildings traditionally have a single-skin facade. Some have tried to combine this with natural ventilation, but that is not possible with the high altitude wind speeds. In this project, the wind turbines push air in and out of the buffer zone, thereby reducing the shafts size and the need for complex technology.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

The project is currently in a dormant state. Intended as a real commission it is now waiting for a further step toward the final design. Never intended as a mere architectural speculation, it became an implicit manifesto. It was of utter importance for our consciousness growth as designers: It raised questions more than giving answers, making us challenge our common sense for scale, social problems and ecological awareness. It is not really about speculating, but providing solution in situations where this scales are possible. If awarded the prize it will be used to expand the investigation toward solutions for the current environmental circumstance with a true awareness of our inadequate lifestyles. As logical, responsible beings we cannot overlook the future and refuse to adapt to our world because it might inconvenience us temporarily, and we need not see such restructuring as an imposition, rather as an opportunity to develop a better quality of life.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

Urbanity is an exploding reality. Such expansion has happened to the detriment of the public realm. More need for space means more buildings. More buildings means more private spaces and not more parks, squares or places for social interaction.
Is the tower the only typology that will prevail as an answer for dense urban settings? Is the only social interaction available in today's form of living the awkward elevator encounter? Working and living up to 300-400 meters has to be a new form of social segregation or imprisonment?

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

JDS is a multidisciplinary office that focuses on architecture and design, from large scale planning to furniture. Rich with multiple expertises, our office is fuelled by talented designers and experienced architects that jointly develop projects from early sketches to on-site supervision. All of which, regardless of scale, outlines an approach that is affirmatively social in its outcome, enthusiastic in its ambition and professional in its process. At the core of our architecture is the ability to take a fresh look at design problems through experienced eyes. Our approach aims at turning intense research and analysis of practical and theoretical issues into the driving forces of our design. By continuously developing rigorous methods of analysis and execution, JDS is able to combine innovative thinking and efficient production. The office has a wide portfolio of international work and the attitude of involving external consultants to improve the design intelligence of a given project team. The use of complementing teams ensures that a project will never suffer from being too conventional nor too naive. In this way we seek to bring forth the true nature of a design problem and the external forces shaping its development in order to provide the best possible design solution for our client.