POWERHOLDING TOWER, EKO ATLANTIC

LAGOS, NIGERIA- A port city and the most populous city in Africa. Officially, the population of Lagos was last recorded at about 10,000,000. It is the second fastest growing city in Africa and seventh fastest in the world. 

To cope with the rapidly growing population of Lagos, an ambitious and eco-friendly project known simply as ‘Eko Atlantic’ is underway. Eko Atlantic involves the reclamation of the original coast line from centuries of erosion just south of Victoria island. The project is anchored by the implementation of the ‘Great Wall of Lagos’ spanning 5 miles (8km) and protecting new development as well as the existing Island from perpetual flooding.

 

A 2224 acre (9 km2) development, Eko Atlantic is expected to home for 400,000 and the workplace for an additional 250,000.
The entire population -approximately 150m- uses as much grid power as the area around Narita airport in Tokyo. In context, South Africans consume 55 times more energy per head and Americans, 100 time more.

 

Incessant electricity outage is ubiquitous and results in every household owning a private generator as a backup system. In fact 2/3 of the all electricity is produced in basements and backyards by a $13 billion a year generator industry. Piezoelectricity -electricity resulting from pressure- has been in recent years implemented on smaller scales as stepping pads in places like Tokyo subway stations to harvest kinetic energy generated by crowds to power ticket gates and display systems.

 

But what if this concept was extrapolated to a larger scale as a continuous circulation path of a building, that generated and stored energy as users walked through the building, and disseminated that stored power to light up the neighboring community. A Mixed use building with programs that foster heavy community use and traffic. Programs such as the Market Place, Offices, Universities and Museums. This is the idea behind the ‘Power Holding City’.

 

The primary circulation of the building is a continuous 1:40 spiral ramp traveling the entire height of the skyscraper. This continuous ramp is clad with piezoelectric stepping pads and covers total linear distance of 2.85 miles. There is an elevator core adjacent to the ramp but stops only at 3 floor internals. A series of bridges also clad with the same stepping pads connects the ramps perpendicularly and create and interesting pattern through the epicenter of the enormous ramp. These bridges not only serve as a way to bypass the entire revolution need to advance one from floor to another, but also breaks down the monotony of the spiral ramp.

 

The Bridge are visually reinforced with bamboo slats creating a woven pattern through the section of the ramp. In addition to Piezoelectric technology the entire south facing facade is covered with PVC embedded glass to harness solar energy and power certain building functions.

Skyscraper shall include a Cultural Center, Retail and Market Place, University, Offices and Restaurants. These programs directly serve the community and empower the people literally and figuratively.