Rem Koolhaas has been quoted saying that skyscrapers create “vertical organization and new territories.” And now, one young Mexican architect, José Muñoz Villers, has designed a building that embodies these sentiments. Muñoz Villers incorporates the latest technologies, materials, engineering, and a holistic view of urban space into his design. The building, named the Euroscraper, is such a forward-thinking design that it has garnered 3rd place in the eVolo Architecture Skyscraper competition.
Muñoz Villers says that “skyscrapers are the types of structures that can, in an exciting manner, consolidate and condense the great advances in technology and respond to the new social and spatial necessities that the city contains.” One of these needs is a heightened awareness of environmental sustainability. The building’s looping form reduces its resistance to wind, increases natural light and ventilation, and contributes to the green lung of the city by incorporating gardens into the scheme of the project.
The Euroscraper was conceived to be located in the Parisian office district of Porte Maillot and would complement the Arc du Triumph and La Défense. The concept and look of the building are inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s quest “to capture the void.” To do this, the Euroscraper is designed as a loop, generating a “growth upward of earth-generated forces.” The building would have public spaces and infrastructure at its base and offices, a sky lobby, residential space leading upwards to more public spaces and urban attractors at its crown. The intention of the structure is to “‘join seamlessly the center and intermediate zone” of Paris and “to be plugged into the tissue while redirecting all the kinetic conditions upwards uninterruptedly.” + Euroscraper
21 Responses to “EUROSCRAPER by José Muñoz Villers”
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I get the feeling this is a bit like the nifty concept cars we never see hit production.
I hope it never gets built. What a monster. Mr. José Muñoz Villers can make it into a nice ring for his wife and them it will not offend anyone. It is a bad case of “architecture as object”. Do you truly think it would look nice or add anything to our lives having this decaying organic ring in our skyline?
Edan you took the words right out of my mouth! BUT he should careful his wife might divorce him if he bough her a ring that would look like those monstrosities .This a classic case of the other extreme,on the one hand you have the pathetic cookie cutter chicken house that are springing out all over the landscape & on the other you these EXAGGERATIONS from those whom do not have THE GIFT for futuristic architecture of a Le Corbusier (to conceive villa Savoye in 1929) so they are craping this rubbish.
i like these 3D images . cool
I think the best part of this type of architecture is that you cant upload the form to 3d tetris and ever expect to get past level one.
On the other hand, in my opinion architecture in the REAL world is less about sculpture and more about organizing the many issues and possible complications that are particular to a project site. Otherwise what is the difference between an architect and an artist who goes to an engineer for help in designing a port-a-potty for the 21st century? This project maybe would seem a lot more interesting if his site wasn’t a city of holographic buildings. But, if it was……!
SO maybe the architects who dig this kind of thing will find their energy satisfyingly expelled into alternative world projects when things like second life are less of an entry level concept. Then their sculptural desires will not conflict with reality, but their theoretical dreamworld can still have a real effect on spatial interactions.
Note: I cant organize my bedroom. So, if it was the shape of a pulsating inverted vagina mold, i would probably end up choking myself to death on some of my dirty socks.
i get the feeling your “homeboy” corbusier might have had the same trite spoken of him in 1929
hmm… i love it… haha =)
YUST A COMMENT ABOUT MR. MUNOZ VILLERS, AT FIRST LOOKS AVANT GARDE, SIMPLE AND ETHEREAL WITH AN OUTHER SPACE REMINICENCE, SO FAR SO GOOD, BUT COMONG TO THIS EARTH I DO NOT SEE SOMETHING LIKE IN THE NEXT – 100 – YEARS.
I AGREE, ARQ. IS FOR PEOPLE, PEOPLE OF TODAYS, NOT FOR THE FUTURE.
IT IS FOR ME, NOTHING MORE THAN A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO A VERY REAL AND URGENT PROBLEM.
DREAMING DO NOT COST, BUT SOME TIMES, THEY DO NOT SOLVE NOTHING, BUT KEEP DREAMING.
I think I would move in–if I could afford it!
Jose did this project as a student at Columbia University (GSAPP) under Asymptote’s Hani Rashid. It had/has no intentions of being built. It was simply a student project study. Nothing more and nothing less.
Wow. Sometimes I forget just how few people are visionaries. But then I get to read all of these sad comments.
can you list some people you call visionaries? your comment begs the question from me.
Jose, CONGRATS!!! For thinking Outside of the BOX!!!
This is the kind of things that makes you think on where are we as society and where are we going.
The impact on the futuristic look versus the ordinary landscape is huge and as a piece of art is phenomenal.
And come-on if this where already built who wouldn’t want to live or visit this building!
Keep up the good work and Ideas
“la chilanga”
Amazing work dude, don’t llisten to those that don’t have anything better to do tan criticize the work they could not even achieve in their wildest dreams!
Compound curves create colossal cash cows.
On 29 January 1967 Jorn Utzon, who had submitted a revolutionary design concept, was declared winner of the Bennelong Point Opera House competition. Utzon’s design had been pulled from a reject pile by the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, one of four jury members deciding the competition. Taken by Utzon’s diagrammatical sketches, Saarinen harangued his colleagues into unanimity……….Thank God for that !
FROM A RESIDENT OF SYDNEY
It’s nice looking but impractical.
I see no obvious way for this structure to be held up efficiently. Even if it could be built, the concrete and steel neccessary would easily surpass that of a “boring” verticle skyscraper, possibly by multiple factors. This is not a green building. Even if the running costs were low, the initial construction costs would more than cancel out any benefit. This building is definitely a toy for the first world.
There is a reason that skyscrapers are mostly verticle – It’s the most funicular form when loading gravitational forces!
It looks like a snake tryng to eat itself.
A dare to be different… is what sparks innovation…. a change from the norm….that one day becomes the familar.
haters! nice effort, jose.