Building Tall, The Minerva Tower Part 1 Project 2004 Harjinder SinghJason Tan University of Nottingham Nottingham | UK Today’s high rise cities are generally one-dimensional due to tall buildings creating ‘vertical cul de sacs’ in isolation. My intention was to provide an interconnected network of floating spaces where different social groups are juxtaposed in order to collide, interact and communicate in a flexible, sustainable, ‘three-dimensional city’. The program, structure and organisation of this 3-dimensional city is heterogeneous and dynamic to reflect the urban and social condition of London. The adaptable megastructure towers containing urban microcosms are linked by Skybridges facilitating movement and connectivity. The skybridge network also expediates emergency evacuation in a post-September 11th world. Harjinder demonstrates a remarkable maturity of design understanding for a Year 3 student. Expanding the project brief far beyond the ‘ask’ for a tall building in the City of London, he developed the idea of a number of multi-use high rise buildings linked by a network of skybridge ‘pavements in the sky’. Drawing on the work of Archigram and Hiroshi Hara amongst others, his completed design embraces both the fantastical and the believable. The cross-programmatic research support studies – informing all aspects of the building from vertical circulation strategies to the need for high-level pig farms – is particularly impressive. Tutor(s)