Those of you whose vision for the future consists of smooth metallic textures, gigantic structures with fancy shapes, and studies in silver and grey and chrome, should take to the Enoki Eco City envisioned by Rome’s OFL Architecture. It is an audacious design for the city of the future, and while it looks like something that has sprung straight out of a sci-fi film or video game, it is inspired by a plant life as feeble and innocuous as Enoki mushrooms. However, expand these thumb-sized mushrooms several thousand times and raise them 150 stories, and they don’t look so feeble or innocuous anymore.
The slanting, criss-crossing towers are topped with pods that contain all the requirements and necessities for healthy urban living. Step inside, and you will find commercial and residential spaces, green areas, sports facilities and areas reserved for community and cultural activities. Besides, rather than being fancy and extravagant, the architecture blends together advances in aerodynamics, material science, and energy and environmental conservation.
The designers explain that the structures have not been conceived at the cost of practical considerations, but in harmony with them. The city is designed to be fully self-sufficient with regards to its daily necessities and energy requirements, and each tower has the capacity to accommodate 6,000 residents. Much like skyscrapers, the architects envision that these towers can co-exist with a regular cityscape. Naturally, they will shoot up dramatically from their surrounding landscape, and redefine our conception of a skyline.
However practical the structures are meant to be, the designers have given themselves ample opportunity to express their imaginations, and here I’m not just referring to the shape of the structure. How do you think one reaches the pods at the top? No, not with the help of elevators. There are flying shuttles to get you from the city below straight to the top! That really is an element of the future.
The exterior of each futuristic tower is, in the words of the architects, “made with steel diamond-shaped panels, appropriately follows the main cellular structure of the enoki made from steel and glass, having a molecular shape.” If that is a little too complicated to follow, don’t worry. Before the towers reach the stage where they may be considered a current possibility, there may be several revisions.
OFL Architecture is convinced that its idea is complete, though. The designers have even claimed that although the original concept has been designed for Rome, it is applicable to any major city of the world, including Paris, Tokyo or New York.
