A Biological Approach to City Building

The city is being built by HOK in partnership with the Biomimicry Guild.

"Recently, the company formed an exclusive alliance with the Biomimicry Guild, a Montana-based consulting organization that pairs consulting biologists with designers, seating architects and ecologists together at the drawing table. When HOK is involved early in a project, an interdisciplinary team of Guild and HOK professionals visits the site to better understand the "genius of place" in order to aid the design team's architectural approach. Faced with constructing a hypothetical building in a desert setting, for example, HOK designers drew inspiration from the barrel cactus, whose vertical ridges work as a self-shading device-something that would cut down artificial cooling loads in the finished structure."