Tensile City

The essence of the problem in Rio de Janeiro is the sociocultural, political and economic polarization. Favelas around the edge of the city represent the people who are on the edge of their life pushed away from the competition with inequality. Public policy have little control in crowding, poor nutrition, pollution, disease and unsanitary condition. Favelas are expanding as the boundary of the city does. This condition requires imminent cure rather than gradual renovation or partial bandage. Without subverting the current sociocultural and physical structure of city, the polarization of two inconvenient presents cannot converge into a meaningful future. Tensile City is a network of towers suggesting a radical and immediate cure for the current condition. For more than one hundred years after the birth of the skyscraper, our tower designs have been confined by a simple notion, a rigid core and heavy perimeter columns. And, the city has been the sum of those structurally independent towers. We envision a future skyscraper typology that is more efficient and unburdened by large vertical compression members at the perimeter and these towers are horizontally connected by bridge like optimized tensile forces and to achieve lateral stability from each other. This structural concept with tensile forces and organization idea between towers result in uninterrupted views, open space planning, efficient daylighting, and noble concept for city infrastructure. Once, before Modernism, the major buildings have represented the culture, history and nation. Greek architecture represented the sophisticated philosophy by proportions and order. Roman architecture represented the Empire. Modernism has flattened these ornamental quality to represent the new machine world by abstraction and transparency. Now, most of the towers in major cities no longer host the public function but stands for the private profit, simultaneously wanting to be an icon of the city representing the globalness and contemporariness. Architects work with differentiation on massing and envelopes within constraints. Ironically, the sum of these cosmetic differences is the generic city. We are witnessing the major architectural projects hosting mere differences from other buildings. Tensile City, against the act of creating differentiation, avoid any style nor representation of ideology but, pursue rational form with physics optimizing the tensional forces among the towers, which serve to provide neutral form allowing equal public infrastructure to the people. Commodification in capitalistic world has made the architecture in private sector merely different form from the others ignoring the real social, cultural and urbanistic problems. Facing the great challenge of Rio de janeiro, the Tensile City emerges as a radical and immediate cure.