A maze-like tower of voids and projections looms above the streets of Tokyo, offering residents cascading outdoor spaces all along the building’s roof and facade. ‘Tree-ness House’ by Japanese architect Akihisa Hirata takes inspiration from nature for this unusual design of stacked concrete boxes full of inward-facing private rooms as well as outward-facing terraces. It almost seems like you could get lost inside exploring all of its nooks and crannies.

Announced in 2010 and completed this year, ‘Tree-ness House’ aims to create a more dynamic experience for its residents with ambiguous interior and exterior spaces. Instead of stacking the floors on top of each other, individual private spaces are offset at various heights with ‘pleated’ openings making room for small gardens.

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The interior spaces are just as ambiguous, with staggered voids and glass walls offering glimpses of the terraces and the sky beyond them. For a better look at Tree-Ness house, inside and out, check out the website of photographer Vincent Hecht.

Kinetic architecture, verdant cascading balconies, timber-frame skyscrapers and double-helix bridges: Beijing- and Salzburg-based multidisciplinary firm Penda brings all sorts of refreshing ideas to the worlds of architecture, landscape and interior design. Founded by Chris Precht and Dayong Sun, the youthful firm subverts norms and commands attention with its surprising solutions, and we’ll likely see a lot more stunning projects from them materializing in the future.

Tel Aviv Arcades

This September, Penda teased architecture fans with exciting images of a new project, the Tel Aviv Arcades, without providing any information. “Excited to share one of our current projects with you: a residential high rise in Tel Aviv,” they wrote on Facebook. “Here a preview, more soon!” Over 8,000 people liked the photo showing the building in profile, with a cascade of balconies providing natural light and green space to every floor.

Tree Tower Toronto

Drawing inspiration from a true classic, Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Toronto, Pends presents their design for ‘Tree Tower Toronto,’ an 18-story timber-framed residence. It’s a beautiful example of the high-rise wooden building trend. “ur cities are an assembly of steel, concrete and glass,” they say. “If you walk through the city and suddenly see a tower made of wood and plants, it will create an interesting contrast. The warm, natural appearance of wood and the plants growing on its facade bring the building to life and could be a model for environmental friendly developments and sustainable extensions of our urban landscape.”

Hongkun Art Auditorium

Located in Beijing, Penda’s interiors for ‘Art Auditorium,’ subdividing the multi-use space with curving, organic wooden cutouts that are almost Art Nouveau in nature, contrasting with a heavy, minimalist concrete facade. The firm inserted what they call the ‘art box,’ an all-in-one wooden built-in, which adds arches mirrors and steps to small areas for lectures, readings, small exhibitions and an area for trading artwork.

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Terraced Balconies Double Helix Bridges Spotlight On Penda Architecture

Not all architecture incorporating lots of living greenery is doomed to remain an unrealistic rendering, depicting buildings that can’t structurally support the weight of all the soil and water needed to keep full-sized trees alive. Architect Thomas Heatherwick built ultra-strong concrete pillars into his 1000 Trees design, for example. Other buildings take a subtler approach, choosing ivy, potted plants or existing trees rooted in the ground. All of these projects attempt to meld urban architecture with lush gardens in the hopes of cleansing the air, storing CO2 to mitigate climate change and providing enhanced access to green spaces in cities.

Valley: Green-Terraced Towers by MVRDV in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Construction began in August 2017 on MVRDV’s ambitious ‘Valley,’ a mixed-use complex of green-terraced towers in Amsterdam’s central business district. ‘Valley’ is notable not only for its unusual offset stacking of volumes , creating an irregular shape, but also for all the greenery it supports. The towers include 196 apartments, 7 stories of offices, shops, restaurants, cultural facilities and a three-story parking lot.

House for Trees by VTN Architects in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

VTN Architects approached ‘House for Trees’ as a way to alleviate the lack of access to green spaces as well as poor air quality found in big cities like Ho Chi Minh. This residential project incorporates trees into its design, envisioned by the firm as a “small park in a dense neighborhood.” The trees are set into deep planter boxes disguised among the concrete volumes of the house, with cut-outs allowing their crowns to rise as high as they like.

Nautilus Eco Resort by Vincent Callebaut in the Philippines

The Nautilus Eco Resort by Vincent Callebaut is designed as a ‘zero emissions, zero waste, zero poverty’ development for the Philippines in response to environmental and social problems in the country, like overfishing, pollution and mass tourism. The project would be built from reused or recycled materials, self-sufficient in producing its own energy and food, and engage volunteer ecotourists in cleaning up plastic waste that washes up onto the area’s beaches. It consists of a series of shell-shaped hotels and apartment towers spiraling around a central island housing a nautical center and scientific research laboratories. The plant walls cool the buildings as they grow food.

Amata + Triptyque Timber Building in São Paulo, Brazil

Constructed entirely from Brazilian timber, this building is a collaboration between architecture studio Triptyque and forest management company Amata. The building aims to be a giant carbon sink, contributing towards the fight against climate change. Each square meter of wood is capable of absorbing a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the environment. The 13-story building contains co-working, co-living and dining spaces, the edges of its terraces dripping with living plants.

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Lush Life 12 Verdant Architecture Projects Making Plants A Main Priority

Apartment buildings are typically so hideous, it’s kind of exhausting. A structure with some measure of character gets knocked down in a prominent spot and before locals dare to dream that something cool might go up in its place, there’s another boring old block of apartments (or worse yet, condos) adding to the dull architectural noise of the city. Of course, it’s all subjective. You could argue, fairly enough, that pretty much all new apartment buildings are ugly, and that trying to make them ‘cool’ results in an even more irritating visual offense. What do you think – are these 13 designs switching up the same-old same-old in a positive way?

Lots of Light: 9 Units at the Apartment in Kamitakada

Developers looking to squeeze big bucks out of a project by creating high-end luxury housing are a lot more motivated to build structures that are more interesting than usual, but every now and then, there’s the rare project that gives some aesthetic consideration to a building that’s actually affordable to the average city resident. Takeshi Yamagata Architects designed this 9-unit building in Tokyo as a cluster of four buildings connected by open-air pathways, integrating gardens, curving walls and lots of windows for the feel of an urban refuge minus the multi-million-dollar price tag.

325 Kent by SHoP Architects

Currently under construction on the site of an old Domino sugar factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the 325 Kent project by SHoP Architects is part of a redevelopment masterplan transforming the refinery into a 380,000-square-foot complex with a waterfront park and four residential buildings containing 2,800 rental units. SHoP’s building will house 522 of those apartments in a 16-story structure, arranged around a dramatic elevated courtyard. The units at the top will be stepped to create a series of spacious outdoor terraces. Nope – this one isn’t going to be cheap.

Pixelated Concrete: 222 Jackson by ODA

Over in Queens, the 11-story 2222 Jackson building by ODA features a pixelated concrete facade creating voids and projections for shade, privacy and outdoor spaces. Located just steps away from MoMA PS1, the building is conceived as a modular grid, giving it about 30% more outdoor space than the same-sized building with the same number of units arranged in a more typical shape.

Parasitic Growth: Plug-In City 75 by Stephane Malka

Commissioned to update and expand a 1970s-era building in Paris, architect Stéphane Malka proposes a system of parasitic wooden cubes that would attach to the facade, extending the living space and reducing the structure’s energy consumption by 75 percent. The unusual design would help mitigate problems with poor insulation and permeable windows while adhering to the city’s restrictive building laws, which don’t allow architects to build vertically.

Contemporary and Complimentary: p17 Housing in Milan

How do you sensitively design a new apartment complex that will blend in with a historic neighborhood while reflecting the era in which it’s being built? For P17, a residential housing complex in Milan, Italian architectural firm Modourbano harmonizes with surrounding buildings while retaining a contemporary feel, thanks to the beautiful natural hues in its sandstone facade.

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No More Ugly Apartment Buildings 13 Designs Refreshing The Paradigm

A 13-foot-tall high-tech green wall encased in a concrete frame is capable of cleaning as much polluted air as an entire forest, combining the Internet of Things and biotechnology to collect data while it improves the urban environment. Created by Green City Solutions, the ‘tree’ isn’t really a tree at all, but rather a moss culture that removes dust, nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases from the air while also collecting weather data, providing electricity via solar panels and filtering its own rainwater.

Wifi sensors measure factors like temperature, water quality and soil humidity that help each CityTree self-regulate while also allowing the creators to measure how efficient it is at its job. Over a period of a year, each one can remove up to 240 metric tons of climate change-inducing CO2 from the air. Each one features a display for information or advertising. It also features optional benches on either side, and can be vandalism-proofed and customized according to a city or company’s needs. Green City Solutions takes care of the maintenance, and there’s a slim-line version measuring one square meter for smaller spaces.

Asia’s first CityTree went up in Hong Kong last summer, and around 20 others have been installed in cities like Oslo, Paris and Brussels. More are planned, but red tape tends to get in the way, stalling its growth to additional cities. The German-based company plans to introduce the CityTree to lower-income countries like India as well. While it’s definitely not enough to combat urban air pollution on its own, it’s an interesting element to integrate into a more comprehensive strategy.