This Skyscraper of the Future Would Let City-Dwellers Explore The Natural World

What if traveling between sweltering deserts, freezing glaciers, humid swamplands, and sweeping savannas was as simple as hopping into an elevator? That might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but Poland-based architecture collective Bomp has let their imagination run wild with their design for the Essence Skyscraper, an enormous tower with a different ecosystem on each floor.

The design for the futuristic building, which won the eVolo skyscraper design competition last spring, includes eleven different landscapes, as well as an enormous aquarium suspended nearly one hundred feet from the ground. According to Bomp, the landscapes would be layered in such a way that, as visitors ascend to different floors, climates change gradually. Impatient visitors, however, would also be able to jump into elevators nestled into the building’s facade and explore climates in whatever order they liked.  

The architects explain that, in designing the skyscraper, they wanted to provide a secret garden for city-dwellers. According to a press statement, “The main goal of the project is to position non-architectural phenomena in a dense, urban fabric, by using the building as a neutral background.”

The skyscraper would have caves, jungles, waterfalls, and even mountains. And though there are no plans to actually build it, it offers an exciting vision of what could be: an alternative form of city living, where nature and urban life no longer feel antithetical. Check out a few concept illustrations below:

All Images Courtesy of BOMP

[h/t: Popular Science]