Rhodium Tower

Rhodium Tower began with a question about weight. How much of a tall building can be made from the ground it stands on, and how much of it can be given back as living surface? The answer shaped every decision that followed: a rammed earth podium quarried within eighty kilometres, a glue-laminated timber core, and a facade that is planted rather than clad.

The tower is organised as three climatic zones. The podium holds workshop and civic programme behind thick thermal mass. The mid-rise levels carry residences wrapped in the living facade, each apartment opening onto a planted loggia deep enough to shade the glass in summer. Above, the sky forest caps the building with a microclimate that cools the air drawn down through the atrium.

Nothing here is decorative. The planting is structural to the building's performance, the timber is left exposed to register humidity and age, and the earth base will darken with rain. Rhodium is designed to be photographed in twenty years, not on the day it opens.