eVolo Skyscrapers 3 edited by Carlo Aiello
eVolo, 2016
Hardcover, 656 pages

Every year since 2006 the eVolo Skyscraper Competition has asked architects, students, engineers, designers, and artists from around the world to submit "outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the implementation of novel technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations along with studies on globalization, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution." Those familiar with the competition know these are not "shovel-ready" designs; the winners will not jump from the drawings boards to reality any time in the near future ? if at all. These are experiments: speculations on density, cities of the future, and how technology can be harnessed to envision and realize new realities. Or in the words of eVolo's Carlo Aiello, the submissions "are not traditional skyscrapers by any means but instead they are deep investigations of many aspects of contemporary architecture and urbanism."
The third limited-edition Skyscraper book collects 150 submissions, what are considered the best from the last three competition cycles. At 656 pages, it's a sizable book, big enough to give each project two spreads. Each project is documented through a consistent layout: colored background with title, author(s), project description at top, and four boards/images below that take up most of the pages' real estate. Each project is found ...