China Considers an Immense Skyscraper Shaped Like a Cloud

Shenzhen is a rapidly developing city in the Pearl River Delta, swarming with a huge population and outsized architecture—it contains two of the top-25 tallest skyscrapers in the world. So it's fitting that a contest to cram another building into its skyline would pick this structure, a super-dense city within a city that resembles a looming thunderhead.

The aptly named "Cloud Citizen" would be "one interconnected system of functions and public plazas in the sky," say its promoters at the Urban Future Organization, CR-Design, and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Its three central towers would crest at a height of 2,231 feet, making it second in height only to the 2,717-foot-tall Burj Khalifa. Meanwhile, its bulk would occupy 18.3 million square feet—or two-thirds of a square mile—and would be packed with living modules, rolling green space, cultural facilities, offices, rainwater basins, energy plants, and (I'm guessing here) a giant circus net to catch people who accidentally tumble off its zig-zag curves.