SKYCAR CITY: A Pre-emptive History

From the 2006 Marcus Prize Studio at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Winy Maas of MVDRV presents the work of twelve students who explored the relationship between infrastructure, architecture, and urban form. This highly investigative studio pushed the physical and conceptual limits of given definitions of city, circulation, and program. Tested in two scenarios (one real in Tianjin, China and the other purely hypothetical) Maas and his students sever vehicular traffic flow from its traditional two-dimensional plane and then forecast the potentials of a new, hyper-volumetric city where given urban activity inflate to fully occupy all three-dimensions. Populated by 5 million inhabitants and rising 800 meters high, this new ‘sky car city’ is buzzing with the flows of goods and people, as they navigate the airways in several models of air-born vehicles, also designed by the students.