Innovative high rises honored at eVolo’s 2025 Skyscraper Competition | News

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The Living Refuge: A Symbiotic Sanctuary For Humans And The Vanishing Pollinators by Changsi Wang

eVolo Magazine has revealed the winners of its 2025 Skyscraper Competition. The contest received 149 submissions, with three winners and 14 honorable mentions selected.

The annual award has been running since 2006 and seeks to garner “visionary ideas that through the novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.”

The jury for the 2025 competition was composed of Nici Long (Co-Founder, Cave Urban), Davide Macullo (Director, Davide Macullo Architects), Juan Pablo Pinto (Co-Founder, Cave Urban), Wenyuan Peng (Director, Yuan Architects), and Leonid Slonimskiy (Director, Kosmos Architects).

The winning entries were as follows:

First Prize
The Living Refuge: A Symbiotic Sanctuary For Humans And The Vanishing Pollinators by Changsi Wang (United States)

The Living Refuge: A Symbiotic Sanctuary For Humans And The Vanishing Pollinators by Changsi Wang

Description excerpt: “The Living Refuge is a speculative skyscraper project that reimagines the high-rise as a vertical ecological infrastructure for pollinators in Manhattan. Developed in response to the accelerating decline of pollinator species caused by habitat fragmentation, pesticide exposure, and urban environmental stress, the project proposes a new role for architecture—one that actively supports biodiversity rather than displacing it.”

The Living Refuge: A Symbiotic Sanctuary For Humans And The Vanishing Pollinators by Changsi Wang

“At the core of the proposal is a 3D-printed façade system designed as a living ecological skin. Instead of functioning as a sealed envelope, the façade forms a network of cavities, pockets, and microclimates capable of retaining moisture, accumulating organic matter, and supporting vegetation growth. These conditions enable mosses, lichens, and flowering plants to establish over time, creating a stable habitat for pollinators above the fragmented and chemically treated ground plane.”

The Living Refuge: A Symbiotic Sanctuary For Humans And The Vanishing Pollinators by Changsi Wang

“The project integrates a distributed pollinator habitat system throughout the height of the tower. Interior cavities embedded within the façade provide nesting environments inspired by natural hollow tree structures, while exterior planting zones support foraging and movement. Together, these systems create a continuous vertical ecosystem where plants, microorganisms, and pollinators can coexist and evolve.”

Read more about the project here.

Second Prize
Microbiome Swarm Net by Nasim Bakhshinejad, Sheida Ghelichkhany, Alireza Agah, Negar Hashemol Hosseini, Fatemeh Peysepar, Fatemeh Malemir (Canada, Italy, United Arab Emirates)

Microbiome Swarm Net by Nasim Bakhshinejad, Sheida Ghelichkhany, Alireza Agah, Negar Hashemol Hosseini, Fatemeh Peysepar, Fatemeh Malemir

Microbiome Swarm Net by Nasim Bakhshinejad, Sheida Ghelichkhany, Alireza Agah, Negar Hashemol Hosseini, Fatemeh Peysepar, Fatemeh Malemir

Description excerpt: “The project begins with a fundamental question: Can architecture function like a living organism, capable of sensing, responding to, and actively combating microplastic pollution? To explore this idea, we studied microbiomes, biofilms, and the collective behavior of Bacteria. In nature, bacteria have remarkable swarm-like intelligence. They move toward polluted areas, gather together, multiply rapidly, and enhance their metabolic degradation of these pollutants. This adaptive intelligence became the conceptual foundation for our proposal: an architecture that acts not as a mechanical machine, but as a living filter.” Read more about the project here.

Third Prize
The Return: Reclaiming The Right To Move by Danny Elachi Elsaadi, Dima Elachi Elsaadi (Saudi Arabia)

The Return: Reclaiming The Right To Move by Danny Elachi Elsaadi, Dima Elachi Elsaadi

The Return: Reclaiming The Right To Move by Danny Elachi Elsaadi, Dima Elachi Elsaadi

Description excerpt: “The Return proposes a territorial system that restores mobility’s place within the contemporary landscape. Permanent anchors placed along historic routes acknowledge a mobile people, reinstating a network long absent from contemporary mapping. When families arrive, temporary tent towers rise around these anchors, enabling communal life, ritual, and craft to reassemble before dissolving as the community departs. The tower consolidates shared services, energy, water routing, and essential support, introducing a level of mobile infrastructure never before available to nomadic communities while preserving the transient character of settlement. It sustains a culture that appears, gathers, and returns.” Read more about the project here.

You can also find the 14 Honorable Mentions in the image gallery below.

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