The Tower of Life is the Architectural icon of the ‘Ecological Era’. It defines the metrics for what, why, and how architecture performs amidst a planetary-scale climate crisis.

The ecological machine, as a context-specific landmark architecture, is garbed in a skin constructed of 3D-printed, locally sourced clay. Its cost is minimised by its process of local extraction and subsequent printing, in lieu of transport and exported materials. The inner cladding system covers the tower and helps foster and maintain a microclimate inside, as well as around it, with minimal to no emissions.

More than ever, we live in a world of cities, with a footprint as big as the planet. The recent industrial consumer-based urban models perceive the planet as a threefold place, where everything is either, ‘the resource garden, ‘the junkyard’, or the ‘house’. Cities thrive on resources from the resource garden and produce trash and emissions that are transferred to the junkyard. The design philosophy behind The Tower of Life is a holistic and ecological approach to solving this blatant problem, including the economy, and the society. The Tower of Life is the next icon for the Vanguard African continent