Architects may be able to appreciate the differences in skyscrapers, but to most of us they’re just gigantic towers of glass and concrete. But an annual design competition held by architectural magazine eVolo shows some truly eye-catching concept ‘scrapers that we’d love to see in real life. Three winners were chosen from 444 different submissions – and a further 22 received honourable mentions. This is the eleventh year of the competition and, as you can see from these pictures, they’re pretty mind-blowing. According to the magazine, the competition “recognises visionary ideas for building-high projects that through the novel use of technology, materials, programmes, aesthetics, and spatial organisations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments”. First place was handed to the Mashambas Skyscraper project that was created by Pawel Lipi?ski and Mateusz Frankowski from Poland. Their idea was to build a modular skyscraper for sub-Saharan Africa that could include an educational facility and a marketplace. One of the other designs included a skyscraper that was embedded into the side of a mountain in Yosemite, California. Another pictured a “Reverse Climate Changing Machine” skyscraper called a “Heal-Berg” that was made to be built over an iceberg in Antarctica. Probably not the most practical living arrangement, but the concept art looks fantastic. Sadly for the architecturally-inclined, none of these fantastic creations are set to get any funding from the competition. Instead, they get a bit of prize money and some publicity that will, hopefully, see them make a start on building them.