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The 2023 eVolo Skyscraper Competition awarded its top three places to speculative designs for mobile housing, ocean-waste collection and Amazon rainforest stewardship. These are unbuilt concepts, not tested construction projects: the competition prizes visionary approaches to vertical architecture rather than resolving ordinary constraints such as cost, permitting and safety.
What the 2023 competition recognized
eVolo Magazine announced the results on May 8, 2023: its jury selected three winners and 15 honorable mentions from 309 submissions. Established in 2006, the annual award recognizes ideas that challenge how people understand vertical architecture and its relationship with natural and built environments. The 2023 results are historical; eVolo’s archive records a later winners announcement for the 2025 competition on February 27, 2026.
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The winning projects use the skyscraper less as a conventional tall building than as a platform for a larger system: a moving settlement, a mobile waste-processing structure, or infrastructure proposed for a forest. Their descriptions explain what the designers intend each system to do, not what has been demonstrated in operation.
First place: Nomad Metropolises
Chufeng Wu, Chang Lu, Bozhi Zheng, Duo Wang and Shuxiao Zhang proposed a mobile city whose residents would migrate together rather than move only as individuals. The design centers on modular homes that plug into stations, connect with existing infrastructure and travel by water or inland trucks.
#1 Best Overall
- Build 20 different models that each teach about force, load, compression, tension and more
- Over 285 interchangeable building pieces
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- Skill level: Intermediate
The project description also includes residential and service modules that can be combined and replaced over time. In construction terms, the idea shifts the focus from a fixed building to adaptable units, connection points and transport logistics. The entry does not establish that such a housing network has been built or show how it would meet real-world requirements such as structural safety, permitting or cost.
Second place: Ocean Re-clamation Skyscraper
Dennis Byun, Harry Tse and Sunjoo Lee imagined a mobile oceanic skyscraper that would move along the Pacific Garbage Patch to collect and recycle waste. New Atlas describes the proposal as using ocean-sourced recycled plastic and a filtering and recycling system.
Those elements are design intentions, not verified cleanup outcomes. The available descriptions do not report a constructed structure, a field trial or measured quantities of waste collected. The concept’s central architectural move is to make a large, mobile structure serve as both a collection point and a processing system.
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Ahmad Hafez and Hamzeh Al-Thweib designed K8 Forest Lift Off for the Amazon Rainforest. Its proposed development model aims to prioritize ecosystem health and biodiversity. The official entry describes drones for monitoring and biodiversity research, alongside water-resource management; New Atlas describes tree-shaped towers, greenery and water storage.
Rank #2
- Material: Plastic Scale: 1/150 Color: White with grey Building Size: 21x6x14cm.Suitable for building models, sand table model, model trains, , scene layout, outdoor landscape,, micro landscape landscaping.
- It is designed that way, not really broken,building after war or you can DIY the scene.
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- Works perfectly with your other scene items. It can also be used as a working model. Building simulation, designer reference
- DIY Player Fans favorite items can be painted and decorated with internal structures. Show personal creativity. Create unique scenes.
These features belong to a design proposal, not deployed forest-protection infrastructure. The cited descriptions do not provide evidence of construction, ecological impact or validated monitoring results. The proposal instead imagines how vertical structures and monitoring tools might be organized around forest stewardship.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How the three designs differ
| Winning concept | Place | Problem it aims to address | Proposed system |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nomad Metropolises | First | Housing and mobility | Modular homes and service units move between locations, connect at stations and link to existing infrastructure. |
| Ocean Re-clamation Skyscraper | Second | Marine pollution | A mobile ocean structure collects and recycles waste, with filtering and recycling functions described by New Atlas. |
| K8 Forest Lift Off | Third | Forest conservation | Tree-shaped towers, drones and water-management features are proposed to support monitoring and biodiversity goals. |
This comparison is about design intent, not comparative performance. The cited material does not provide engineering validation, construction status, safety analysis, cost comparisons or quantified environmental results for the concepts.
What “without constraints” means here
The headline’s phrase reflects the competition’s speculative emphasis. As New Atlas notes, the competition does not center ordinary practicalities such as planning permission, construction budgets, cost or safety. That freedom lets designers propose ambitious systems, but it also means the winning entries should not be read as build-ready plans or proven solutions.
For a construction audience, the useful distinction is between a compelling architectural proposition and a deliverable project. The entries raise questions about modularity, transport, infrastructure connections and environmental goals. The published descriptions do not resolve how those ambitions would translate into engineered, permitted, financed and safely operated buildings.
Quick Recap
Sources
- eVolo Magazine: Winners 2023 Skyscraper Competition
- eVolo Magazine: Nomad Metropolises
- eVolo Magazine: K8 Forest Lift Off
- New Atlas: “Incredible competition imagines skyscraper design without constraints”
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