May 2016 | pinarchitecture-2

MAY 2016 COMPETITION

The Invisible Skyline ///

Skylines are symbols for the cities above which they hover. Yet, the majority of buildings in cities lie well below the pinnacles of skyscrapers. Are skylines appropriate billboards for cities when most of population lives, works, and shops in the bottom few stories? What if a skyline, while still physically there, was invisible above ten stories? How does the function of a skyline change when it can no longer be seen? How might architecture, technology, or natural phenomena hide such a large mass of buildings? What might be the functional or political purpose of hiding a skyline? What happens when a skyline becomes invisible?

Participants are asked to submit concepts that hide a skyline from view, rather than physically remove it. Submissions may be conceptual, technical, and/or artistic.

RESULTS ///

Top 7

Editor's Choice

Paolo Venturella

Rome, Italy

Maria Loriti

Chania, Crete, Greece

Yahya Shaker

Cairo, Egypt

Damien Graham

Strabane, Tyrone, Northern Ireland

Jean Allard

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

Zean Macfarlane

London, United Kingdom

Osama Abou-Samra

Cachan, Paris, France

Anthony J. Cricchio, RA

Norman, Oklahoma, United States

JURORS ///

Nadia Elokdah

Brooklyn, New York, United States
MA Theories of Urban Practice,

Parsons School of Design at The New School
Firm: Partner, in.site collaborative

Fátima Olivieri, AIA

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
M.Arch, University of Virginia
Firm: KieranTimberlake

Faizal Ilyas Omar

Jakarta, Indonesia
ST., Parahyangan Catholic University
Firm: Atelier Riri

ENTRIES ///

54 Entries from 24 Countries

Paolo Venturella

Rome, Italy

JURY COMMENTS ///

"This submission, is both playful and critically astute. Pulling from urbanist AbdoulMaliq Simone's theory of 'people as infrastructure,' this rendering sits on the edge of urban inhabitants as the producers of the city - typically obscured by towering skylines - and the irony of facades as infrastructure for privacy (read: social division?)."

"This entry takes a very different approach to many of the others. Even though it conceals the building envelope itself it sets out to reveal the activity that happens inside. The skyscraper itself is hidden, but the people inhabiting it is not. It is a fun play of the line between publicness and privacy. It also questions the notion of what is public versus what is private. In this entry the public face is above the 10' datum and privacy is actually obtained below that line due to the presence of a building facade."

Yahya Shaker

Cairo, Egypt

JURY COMMENTS ///

"I liked the simplicity of this picture, where the skyline becomes silhouettes of idea, in which the various possibilities can occur."

Maria Loriti

Chania, Crete, Greece

JURY COMMENTS ///

"Technology can be a powerful tool to reveal or conceal the environment around us. Usually virtual reality and visualization tools, such as the one that's represented here, intend to describe things that are not usually physical or present. I like the stance that this entry takes, that visualization tools show us something that is already in our environment, but is 'hidden' from view."

"Advance phone technology makes us able to take pictures in an instant. The photos we take show us what we want to see, because sometimes pictures of skyline are more real than the physical form itself. I like the invisible concept came from how we perceived it."

Jean Allard

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

JURY COMMENTS ///

"Forms in the built environment can be seen as their mere objects or as the reflections of the objects. The ability to conceal a skyline while still being able to register it's reflection is intriguing. We are conditioned to understand reflections as a distorted images, but we can always trace them back to a physical element. In this entry the physical element has been 'removed,' yet the reflection remains, which seems really successful. I also like the somewhat minimalist representation."

Damien Graham

Strabane, Tyrone, Northern Ireland

JURY COMMENTS ///

"This submission inverts The Invisible Skyline proposition in a way, taking the viewer (and the dweller) into the invisible skyline. This side of the dividing line is obscured from the seemingly fundamental and functional layer of the city where our expected 'urbaning' happens. This proposition suggests that the invisible skyline, in fact, serves as a way to design a city within a city, both hidden from each other, for some presumably significant reason: socially, culturally, politically, perhaps even post-apocalyptic climate change."

Osama Abou-Samra

Cachan, Paris, France

JURY COMMENTS ///

"This graphic illustrates the relationship between the skyline, the life in it, and the implication of what might happen, while reminding us the danger of pollution that hovering our skyline."

Zean Macfarlane

London, United Kingdom

JURY COMMENTS ///

"This submission beautifully emphasizes a nearly mirroring effect, causing viewers (or urban inhabitants) to lose their foundation, lose ground, to position themselves in space without a horizon. This begs the question, where do we go? What happens when our real and futuristic imaginaries disappear into themselves? How do we navigate within invisible spaces?"

1ST

2ND

3RD

TOP 7

Editor's Choice

TOP 7

Anthony J. Cricchio, RA

Norman, Oklahoma, United States

EDITOR COMMENTS ///

"This entry depicts a phone being used to filter out the skyline from a city. Digital filters already control how we understand cities through the Internet, but the live aspect in this image is intriguing. There is a dangerous prospect if the same idea were applied to augmented reality headsets in the future. It is not too far fetched to imagine socio-economic groups creating virtual visual barriers between themselves and groups of spaces they do not want to see. The potential for segregating out any person or place that has a different background or opinion than your own is worrisome to say the least."