THE ADAPTIVE CITY METAPHOR: Vertical Forests as Nodes and Artificial Intelligence as Synapses in a Global Network

Abstract

This thesis begins with a provocation: What happens when we stop understanding the city as a horizontal surface and begin conceiving it as a vertical construct? Historically, cities have been imagined in plan—as networks of streets, plots, and voids stretched across the ground. The ground plane has long defined urban life, serving as the primary site for social interaction, ecological intervention, and architectural expression. But in the face of intensifying urbanization and ecological crisis, the horizontal ground is no longer sufficient. This thesis explores how the vertical dimension—the section—can be reimagined as a site of ecological, social, and infrastructural possibility. Focusing on the vertical forest as a typology, it analyzes how projects like Stefano Boeri Architetti’s Bosco Verticale and WOHA’s ParkRoyal Collection Pickering fragment, replicate, and redistribute the ground across multiple levels. While these buildings function and even flourish, they remain exceptions. Drawing on the metaphor of the neural network—not as a literal analogy, but as a conceptual framework—this thesis proposes a shift: that vertical forests operate as nodes in a global ecological infrastructure, with artificial intelligence functioning as synaptic tissue. These are not static objects, but responsive agents—architectural interfaces where climate, species, and data converge. By reconceiving vertical forests as ecological-computational hybrids, this thesis challenges traditional notions of architectural form. It argues for a design language rooted in porosity, feedback, and metabolism. Architecture becomes less about the production of form, and more about the cultivation of systems. When linked by AI, each vertical forest becomes a sensor, an actuator, and a learning system—contributing to an urbanism that is adaptive, multispecies, and distributed. Ultimately, this is not only a design proposition but a philosophical one. It asks us to rethink form not as fixed, but as emergent. Not as a product, but as a process—responsive to environmental inputs and capable of evolution. A new urbanism begins to take shape: not a city that contains nature, but one that becomes nature—alive, intelligent, and interconnected.