LAI, Jimenez

128

Vertical Urbanism

129

Jimenez Lai is currently assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He received his Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto. Previously, Lai has lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin, Arizona, and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout, the Netherlands. Lai has received mentions in competitions in Japan, Europe and the USA. Professionally, Lai has worked for Michael Meredith, REX, and OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and New York. In February 2006, his Spaceship project was featured on archinect.com and in 2007 he was a recipient of the LeFevre Fellowship. In April 2008 his project Phalanstery Module opened at Materials & Applications in Los Angeles.

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Welcome. My name is Wyatt.

Ill write. I promise.

Are you ready for your assignment?

Ill be back in one year. Its a really prestigious experimental project...

do you really have to go?

...You do remember today is our anniversary, right?

LAI, Jimenez

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I cant believe that I will be gone the whole year.

Remember?

In 2009, Burj Dubai was completed.

...at over 800m, it became the tallest structure on earth.

It will be a good year, just you wait and see...

people were asking...

where would it be?

how high can we go?

We are approaching troposphere...

what will it look like?

LAI, Jimenez

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2200 m

2000 m 1800 m 1800 m 1688 m 1477 m

1600 m 1389 m 1400 m 1175 m 1200 m 1000 m 1000 m 843 m 871 m 900 m 921 m 1048 m 1111 m 1257 m

800 m

Beijing
2012

Tehran
2014

Singapore
2017

Sydney
2019

Rome
2022

Graz
2029

Istanbul
2033

Chicago
2036

Tokyo
2039

Bombay
2042

Paris
2046

Hong Kong
2049

Salt Lake City

2050

These towers gradually required resources and economies on a national level.

The Manhattan Tower had the capacity for 87 million inhabitants. It is a State in one architecture.

The soar for new heights continued until the world could only afford 10 Towers.

New York City celebrated the completion of its Tower of Babel on the New Years Eve of 2200.

Vacant properties in the sky needed to be sold quickly. The government decided to intervene.

Lawmakers passed new bills to entice home owners to move up.

Lowered credit rates, debts, and subsidy programmes,

12,000 m

It is a 12km extrusion of the site formerly known as Central Park, scraping the Stratosphere.

It was a new beginning for many citizens.

(public transit map)

LAI, Jimenez

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such power...

The Tower vacuumed all nearby resources and population. Architecture became the city.

Following the vertical urbanism, various housing typologies were developed in sections.

This reversed the figure-ground relationship between Manhattan and the Central Park.

A new dawn for all.

The government implemented all public spaces and amenities inside the tower, drawing a zoning map in an architectural section. It made sense for citizens to abandon suburbia.

Planetary conditions in verticality determined much of the zoning strategies.

LAI, Jimenez

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ATTENTION! Arriving: TROPOPAUSE. Final Station.

As you know, it is physically impossible to live in Stratosphere.

You are our experiment. Show us humans can live higher than Tropopause.

500 km/h of electricity...

Stay here for a year.

80% of the planets vapour...

ugh!

We calculated a 90% survival rate.

(In memory of John Alan Wyatt.)

LAI, Jimenez

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