From datacentre highrises to vertical drone clusters: Six of the best futuristic skyscraper concepts

Tamlin Magee
Tamlin Magee

Tamlin Magee

Tamlin is online editor at Techworld and ComputerworldUK. He has previously covered a wide range of beats at a variety of publications, from European channel markets, enterprise cloud and privacy to architecture, design, film and music. He is particularly interested in the intersection between technology, the political sphere and the day-to-day.

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Every year, architecture journal eVolo runs an international competition for some of the most intriguing, bizarre, futuristic and high-tech concepts for skyscrapers.

Architects from around the world participate, and contributions have ranged from an apartment building with an integrated robotic warehouse for on-demand goods to a sprawling eco-friendly data centre highrise in Iceland.

The competition has been running since 2006. This year’s winner was a ‘horizontal skyscraper’ set around the perimeter of a sunken Central Park in New York, pictured.

Outlandish as some of the concepts may be, they’re intriguing displays of creativity – and there are plenty of cases throughout history where we've got the imagination of science fiction fantasists to credit before others realised their vision.

With that in mind, here are a few of our favourite high-tech futuristic designs on how technology could intersect with architecture in the near to distant future. 

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