Parasitic architecture, simulating future developments of our cities

Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Projections show that urbanization combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050.

Living in these densely urbanized pockets is not just ridiculously expensive, but also substandard for average and low economic groups. Moreover, the cost of living increases so rapidly that being at the same pace with it becomes almost impossible for most households, resulting in an abysmal quality of life.

A possible solution can be to smartly increase the availability of liveable spaces in the cities and structures that are already thriving with people.

The jury for the competition consisted of esteemed designers, professionals and academicians from around the world. The Lead Jurors for the competitions were as follows: 

Ruben Muedra, Principal Architect, Ruben Muedra Estudio de Arquitectura, Spain

Josep Miàs, Architect & Director, Mias Architects, Spain

Aldo Sollazo, Director, Noumena.io, Spain

Some of the Best of competition projects are:

 

Winning Project: The Death and Life of Water

By: Chenjie Xiong

Description: In response to severe water issues in Jaipur, India, this project envisions an alternative way to manage the whole water life-cycle including water supply, use, disposal, and rainwater harvesting, through water infrastructures as parasites, which meanwhile provide a high quality of public space and educate the public through giving visibility to water process.

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Runner - Up: FreshMart

By: Carmen Kam, Kaia Nielsen-Roine & Yiguan Liu

Description: Welcome to the FreshMart Parasite! Our parasite is a communal kitchen and food garden situated over a FamilyMart convenience store in Tokyo. It engages with the overlapping issues of the loneliness epidemic, threatened urban agriculture, and the anxieties of Japan’s work culture by creating a space that allows people from diverse demographics to come together.

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Honorable Mention: URBAN CUPOLA

By: Matt Choy

Description: The idea of this project is to provide a safer and cleaner environment for merchants to dry and store their dry seafood, while also enhancing the rooftop experience for local residents by providing places to rest and gardening.

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Honorable Mention: VAGARIES OF LIFE

By: Yihan Zhu, Xingni Leow & Teck Kiam Tan

Description: The 'Parasite and Host' relationship between an inserted urban sanctuary and a typical public housing 'podium + tower block' typology in Singapore. A tropical urban living room providing an urban fabric of life that favors interaction in the community, which enables deep dive into collective community values, emotion, and spirit of life.

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Honorable Mention: VERANDAH EXTENDS

By: Ismail Rahim

Description: Verandah Extends an urban intervention proposal that re-branding the icon of Medan Pasar, Kuala Lumpur. It’s translated as a seamless climbable verandah-way structure that is parasite to the existing host of Medan Pasar’s Clock-tower that serves the function for the social-cultural activities to resolve the crisis of lack of space in the dense urban context.

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Honorable Mention: Urban Creeper

By: Valentina Kacelnik, Gulherme Trevizani & André Arena

Description: Above all, the project seeks to offer the population a democratic right to use the open space, enjoy the landscape, reconnect with nature and strengthen the community's social fabric, which in the view of the authors is the recipe for a better world.

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Honorable Mention: The panels of perception

By: Pablo Espinoza

Description: Each human being lives a unique perception, based on the limits of time and space a reality made up of objective and sensitive observations which allows us to build a narration of reality from our own consciousness Project made by Pablo Espinoza Francisca Moya Bruno Ramirez teachers Fernando Carvajal Tadea de Ipiña.

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People’s Choice: Holding onto the City

By: Asli Zeynep Doğan, Oğuz Nas, Melek Aydoğan & Mehmet Oğuz Nas

 

Description: Holding onto the City aims to offer a unique lifestyle for free spirit people, by parasitizing the Hong Kong city with a new understanding of public space that is welcoming every citizen equally including the street sleepers.

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People’s Choice: THE CAPSULE

By: João Pedro Reguim

Description: The CAPSULE was thought as a small structure with big functions, such as: the ability to encourage blood donation, a way of making the donation process more comfortable and inviting and a possibility to dismantle the negative idea of parasitic architecture, stimulating future developments in this growing area.

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Editor’s Choice: Shanghai Street Imagined

By: Gracia Wong

Description: In the middle of the busy Mong Kok area sits a cluster of newly revitalized Hong Kong tenement buildings from the 1920s. Our team explores this site on how a small-scaled parasitic architecture affects the appearance and program of a large-scaled building while maintaining its original features.

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Editor’s Choice: Parasitic Architecture

By: Ruth Meigen

Description: Urban Filter Manila is all about climate; helping to solve problems of smog, CO2, heat, and pollution. Three different types of filtering parasites dock to different traffic-hub-hosts. The aim is to make transferring, waiting, and walking in highly frequented and thereby polluted spaces enjoyable and healthy, besides positively affecting the urban climate.

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Editor’s Choice: Clip-on houses

By: Caroline Høgild

Description: Minimal housing for application to bridges aiming to take advantage of old industrial elements. By building around the bridge the possibility of the passage under the bridge is kept, whilst a new public environment on the bridge is created.

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Editor’s Choice: Garoa

By: Studio Projetos BR & Larissa Rutte

Description: A bridge has the function of connecting paths, and traversing the city. Our architecture, starting with the premise of social changes, walks through a dense center, permeating the urban mesh, bringing a new home for the ones in need, becoming the parasite that adapts and allows changes.

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Editor’s Choice: St. James Town Hub

By: Teodor Mlynczyk, Alison Mair & Bill Tang

Description: This parasite is set in the St. James Town community in Toronto, Canada, a 1970s slab-tower development. The repeatable design seeks to address the lack of shared public spaces in the community and proposes a module capable of supporting diverse programs.

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Editor’s Choice: Despacio

By: Giovanna Leal, Jonas Souza, Mylana de Oliveira & Patricia Mendes Vieira

Description: Despacio is a space thought to offer a decompression and deceleration atmosphere to its users. The parasite, shaped like a donut, stands in one of the pillars of the Parque Berrío Station, located right in the center of Medellín, Colombia.

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Discover the design brief here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/parasitic-architecture/info/about

 

Discover the full results here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/parasitic-architecture/entries

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