Eden Rise Project: Rethinking the Relationship Between Urban Architecture and Environmental Sustainability

Architecture as an Ecosystem

Imagine a city where towers are not merely solid structures but become integrated platforms supporting life. In this context, towers can host vertical farms, harvest water from clouds, and nurture interconnected communities living in harmony with the surrounding environment. The idea here goes beyond traditional building design, turning architecture into an active component of the city’s ecosystem.

Addressing the Urban Food Desert

One of the most pressing urban issues is what is known as a “food desert,” where certain neighborhoods, particularly low-income ones, lack easy access to fresh and nutritious food. In these areas, stores are often limited, healthy options are expensive, and residents rely on fast food or small shops offering lower-quality products.

Vertical Farming as a Sustainable Solution

Integrating vertical farms within towers presents an innovative solution to this problem. By growing produce directly inside the towers, fresh food can reach residents without long transportation, reducing waste and enhancing local self-sufficiency. Moreover, this approach allows cities to be reimagined as sustainable communities where daily life is integrated with the surrounding ecosystem, rather than being mere clusters of solid buildings.

Nature-Inspired Architecture

Architectural design demonstrates how natural inspiration can shape both the form and function of buildings. For example, drawing from the streamlined shape of a water droplet reflects the close relationship between the city and water, embodying values associated with life, renewal, and sustainability. This approach illustrates how architecture can go beyond aesthetic dimensions to become a language expressing the surrounding ecosystem.

Integrating Urban Ambition with Sustainability

By combining organic forms with urban ambition, a tower transforms into a vertical extension of what is known as the city’s green belt, the natural spaces distributed within urban areas. This type of design proposes a futuristic vision for cities, where the skyline is defined not just by height or density, but by environmental intelligence and integration with nature.

The Vertical City: Reimagining Urban Life

Inside vertical towers, one can envision a city-like environment, yet stacked across multiple heights. Residences are interconnected with offices, schools, and recreational spaces, forming an integrated community within a single structure. This design allows residents to carry out their daily activities, such as working, learning, relaxing, and socializing, without the need for traditional city-wide commuting.

Education and Daily Life

Integrating schools within the towers makes education a natural part of residents’ daily routines, enhancing a continuous and interconnected learning experience. Similarly, the presence of facilities such as hotels or accommodations within the same structure enables experiencing architecture as a fully integrated ecosystem, which visitors can explore and observe its impact on future urban life.

Vertical Green Spaces

Sky terraces and elevated parks are distributed throughout the structure to provide shared green spaces among the clouds. These areas are not merely aesthetic elements; they form essential social and environmental pillars. They offer residents places to gather, breathe, and reconnect with nature, enhancing well-being and strengthening community interaction in a dense urban environment.

Integrating Technology and Sustainability

What distinguishes modern vertical towers is their ability to seamlessly integrate green technologies within a single structure. Vertical farms provide residents with fresh food directly, while rainwater collection and cloud-harvesting systems efficiently recycle water. Integrated wind turbines, natural ventilation, and breathable courtyards enhance airflow and daylight penetration, reducing energy consumption and improving user comfort. All these systems operate in harmony, like organs within a living organism, transforming the building into a self-sufficient and sustainable unit.

Engineering as the Foundation of Sustainability and Beauty

Engineering plays a crucial role in supporting this vision. Towers rely on multi-layered support systems that provide stability and structural depth, while the Diagrid pattern extends across several floors to create a balanced network combining strength and elegance. Within this framework, interior spaces allow light and air to reach the heart of the building, making the interiors open and vibrant, illustrating how smart engineering can integrate sustainability with a comfortable living experience.

Architecture as an Embodiment of a Futuristic Vision

Vertical towers are more than just an architectural proposal; they reflect the possibility of reimagining cities entirely. Urban design in this context can address inequality, reduce environmental impact, and reshape the relationship between urban life and nature. Here, skyscrapers do not merely dominate the skyline, they enrich it by integrating sustainability and social functionality.

Skyscrapers as Symbols of Sustainability

If this vision is realized, a city’s skyline will not only symbolize economic power but also stand as a testament to commitment to sustainability and equity, offering a living example of how architectural imagination can shape the urban future in a holistic and inspiring way.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

The concept of sustainable vertical towers can be seen as an attempt to reimagine the relationship between architecture and the urban environment, offering tangible opportunities to improve residents’ access to fresh food and reduce environmental impact. However, this model presents a set of architectural and practical challenges that cannot be overlooked. For example, relying on complex water and sustainable energy systems requires continuous maintenance and precise technical monitoring, and the high density of residents within a single structure may affect daily living experiences, including privacy and internal climate control. Additionally, integrating multiple functions, residential, educational, work, and recreational, demands flexible and dynamic planning that balances density with sustainability, which is difficult to achieve on a large scale.

Despite these challenges, the core ideas of this project can inspire smaller-scale or experimental solutions in other cities, such as introducing vertical farms in existing residential buildings or improving water and energy collection systems in limited urban projects. In this way, the experience becomes a source of learning and analysis, rather than a model applied as-is, fostering research into ways to integrate architecture with nature in a more realistic and implementable manner.