Special Mention
2010 Skyscraper Competition
Violeta Sabaliauskaite, Lukas Gadeikis
Lithuania / United Kingdom
Entering 21st century, massive city mazes and high speed is everyday reality and frequently changing our working and living location has become almost a necessity. The SKY-BRIDGE is designed for speeding up this changeability. This is an alternative network of transportation with integrated settlement capability. The SKY-BRIDGE is the idea taken from our ancestors. A Combination of transport networks and skyscrapers follows the basic logic how settlements were created – along rivers and roads with free movement of its dwellers.
Nowadays, migration is much more intensive than in ancient times. Two thirds of the US population move every 5 years. More than one million people move out of the US yearly. The most active age group is 18-34 year olds. The main reason for their movement is change in location of work and education. But still we live far away from work. Londoners spend around 225 hours per year commuting to work. The numbers are rising all around the world as the current migration trend is towards cities. Today more than half of the world population is living in cities, and as building activity increases there is more pressure on poor and overcrowded transport system.
The SKY-BRIDGE brings a change. It offers multifunctional speedway traffic above congested megapolies. At the same time light and transparent structure allows lot of sunlight to reach street level while narrow base saves space for public use and enables the erection of SKY-BRIDGE towers in packed cityscapes – close to working and leisure areas. SKY-BRIDGE is a system that integrates high-velocity Maglev bubble-cars with a mobile dwelling for people, who just can’t sit still. Cubicles the size of minibuses can ride the rails from one station to the other, where, after being moved to a rented space, they inflate to a comfortable and modern lodging with all the luxuries of modern life, and a view over the rooftops of the city. If need be, it can even be transported via ship to metropolises of other continents and again be incorporated in the flow of local life with the SKY-BRIDGE system. Now, your home can truly be always with you.
The same rail network is used for the public transportation as well. Personal bubble-cars with place for up to four passengers can be used by SKY-BRIDGE system habitants and conventional residents alike. At destination station, cubicles stop in multiple slip lanes and are lowered along structural framing to the street level, where it can load/unload their passengers. There, it can also act as lifts for station habitants. Computer managed network allows bubble-cars to maintain extremely low distances while in transit, therefore en route it can cross the stations without decelerating, and traverse any multimillion city covered with SKY-BRIDGE system at incredible speed.
SKY-BRIDGE not only increases density of a city without putting extra pressure on its current transport grid, but provides an alternative mode of transportation. It is an extremely effective transport network, capable of transporting millions of people, and at the same time providing a large quantity of habitation for modern and intensive lifestyle. The entire system is powered by electricity procured from green sources thereby increasing the sustainability of a metropolis. The possibility to carry your home with you eliminates costly relocations. This inflatable and traveling house can become a home for life, valuable and dear and always with you.
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