Rain makers and sunken Central Park, are these the skylines of the future? | CNN

Yitan Sun, Jianshi Wu

American designers Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu proposed transforming Central Park into a sunken landscape.

Yitan Sun, Jianshi Wu

A 1,000-foot glass wall would be built around New York's Central Park, to create the illusion of infinite greenery.

Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, Chengda Zhu

American designers Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao and Chenga Zhu were inspired by the growing use of drone technology.

Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, Chengda Zhu

Drone technology is frequently used to capture breathtaking video footage and is even being tested for product delivery services. The designers believe we will one day require a skyscraper that is completely covered in drone landing docks.

Valeria Mercuri, Marco Merletti

Italian entrants Valeria Mercuri and Marco Merletti explain that modern data centers currently "consume a lot of energy" which requires them to be constantly cooled down in order to avoid overheating. This results in a large carbon footprint.

Valeria Mercuri, Marco Merletti

Located in Iceland, the green "tower is conceived as a giant 3D motherboard," where overheating and energy consumption issues are reduced by the island's naturally cooler climate.

Chen Linag, Jia Tongyu, Sun Bo, Wang Qun, Zhang Kai, Choi Minhye

Chinese designers Chen Linag, Jia Tongyu, Sun Bo, Wang Qun, Zhang Kai and Choi Minhye proposed building a hospital that shifts and transforms according to the requirements of patients. "The idea of the hospital is that the patient does not have to move by himself -- the wards can move to where it should go to."

Changsoo Park, Sizhe Chen

The creation of American designers Changsoo Park and Sizhe Chen is designed for the world's most polluted cities. It houses a large vacuum on its lower floors, which sucks in polluted air and distributes it through cleaning filters on higher floors.

Michael Militello, Amar Shah

American designers Michael Militello and Amar Shah were inspired by the droughts in California. Their creation fuses the process of cloud seeding -- a system by which we are able to purposely stimulate rain -- with architecture. "This architectural concept imagines a future earth where cloud seeding has become the standard process to modify and manipulate the weather."

Nathakit Sae-Tan, Prapatsorn Sukkaset

This green structure by Nathakit Sae-Tan and Prapatsorn Sukkaset, from Thailand, is set in a future where humanity has to adapt to the power of mother nature to survive. "We design skyscrapers with nature as the main user and human as parasites of the planet, struggling to survive and camouflage, living towards the very end of the race."

Soomin Kim, Seo-Hyun Oh

Soomin Kim and Seo-Hyun Oh, from South Korea, imagined an environmentally conscious make-over for New York's Empire State Building. This tower is wrapped in an environmentally friendly "skin" of pods and panels that create a greenhouse environment within the enclosure.

Eric Randall Morris, Galo Canizares

These 1km tall multi-functional towers, by American designers Eric Randall Morris and Galo Canizares, can produce and collect water, as well as pollinate their surrounding landscape, turning the land into an oasis.

Story highlights

The eVolo Skyscraper Competition invites young architects and designers to imagine the skyscrapers of tomorrow

The winning design would involve installing a horizontal mirrored skyscraper in New York's Central Park

CNN —

Rain-making buildings and a bee hive-like tower covered in buzzing drones – these are the structures that could shape the skylines of the future.

Both concepts were submitted to the annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition, which invites young architects and designers from around the world to identify technological and environmental trends or problems, and design skyscrapers that respond to them.

This year, 489 designs were submitted, from which 3 finalists and 21 honorable mentions were selected.

Digging deep

The winning submission was “New York Horizon” by American designers Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu.

Yitan Sun, Jianshi Wu

'New York Horizon' by Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu

Their concept involves digging up Manhattan’s Central Park and surrounding it with a 1,000-foot reflective wall, creating a mirrored “horizontal skyscraper” to reflect the park’s greenery.

By digging down, rather than building upwards, the designers hope to “reverse the traditional relationship between landscape and architecture”.

“The Hive” tower took second place.

Conceived as a response to the rise of drone technology, the tower is covered in drone landing docks, and was designed by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, and Chengda Zhu of the United States.

In third place was the “Data Skyscraper” – a green data center located in Iceland, which Italian designers Valeria Mercuri and Marco Merletti hope could reduce the carbon footprint of traditional energy guzzling data centers.

Dark side

Some submissions imagined a darker future for mankind.

The “Return to Nature” tower flips the dynamic between mankind and its environment.

The creation of Thailand’s Nathakit Sae-Tan and Prapatsorn Sukkaset is set in a world where mother nature is the primary consumer of buildings, while humans are reduced to “parasites of the planet”.

Equally dystopian, “Cloud Craft”, by Michael Militello and Amar Shah of the United States, inhabits a world exhausted by drought, where rain has to be purposely manipulated by frequent use of cloud seeding.

See highlights from the eVolo Skypscraper Competition in the gallery above.