There are two main conceptions about the skyscraper: its bigness and its verticality – which combined are creating a monumental object and presence on the skyline.
The Tiny Skyscraper challenges all of these assumptions and argues for the necessity of another kind of structure – one that defines verticality in a symbiotic relationship with the ground (geology) and biosphere it situates itself in.
For hundreds if not thousands of years marsh- and wetlands and have been drained and protected from floods in order to create valuable farming and building land – e.g. large parts of Northern Germany and the Netherlands have been made accessible if not created this way.
Yet, as these lands and the habitats they provided where transformed, the organic matter and its bound carbon – formerly covered by water – started to deteriorate and get emitted into the atmosphere.
But what about inhabiting these areas? While there are very few contemporary approaches, there is a long list of historic and vernacular building types across northwest Germany and the Netherlands: Entire city quarters or ports have been built on top of carbonised (scorched) oak trunks, which have been rammed into the wet swamp soil meters deep until anchored in load-bearing ground.
The very fact that the material needed to be submerged below groundwater level to conserve it indefinitely situated these structures inside their territory in an almost symbiotic way as the latter cannot be lowered afterwards again.
Its pentagon-like floorpan derives from the wind load optimised shape of historic Windmills; its five tapering cross-laminated wooden columns are further stiffened by a web of steel ropes, connected to large boulders on the ground, which are commonly found in the area.
The proposed area of this intervention is the city state of Bremen, as it provides the urban infrastructure of an urban agglomeration of 1,2 m inhabitants, while being entirely surrounded by former marshlands.
This growing city, which is known for its car, rocket, aviation, weapon and mega yachts exports – actually holds the potential to provide an entirely new housing stock while regenerating its recreation areas and becoming entirely carbon free – if not carbon negative; simply by reintroducing a new zoning law and building type, that hands back former natural habitat in combination with low cost, prefabricated, organic construction as densified as physically possible.