Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community by Yuhan Zhang and Dreama Simeng Lin is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Silver A' Design Award in Futuristic Design Competition Category.
SilverFuturistic· 2025
Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community
by Yuhan Zhang and Dreama Simeng Lin
Client: Yuhan Zhang & Dreama Simeng Lin
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Futuristic Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #164052The Design
About Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community
This project addresses Chicago's food deserts by creating a mile high vertical community at the lakefront, incorporating vertical farms that provide fresh produce within the urban fabric. Inspired by water droplet patterns, the four interconnected towers feature a tubular structure supported by a diagrid exoskeleton, maximizing structural depth and allowing for natural light and air circulation. Renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and cloud harvesting, create a self sustaining environment that can be reproduced in the future.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Sustainable Architecture and Urban Design Services
We specialize in creating visionary sustainable architecture that transforms urban environments. Our expertise in vertical communities, eco-living systems, and renewable energy integration helps cities address environmental challenges while enhancing quality of life. From concept to completion, we deliver innovative architectural solutions that harmonize with nature.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative integration of vertical farming within Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community addresses Chicago's food desert crisis - could you elaborate on how this architectural solution evolved from initial concept to final design?
The integration of vertical farming stemmed from a simple but urgent realization: food deserts in cities like Chicago aren’t just a public health issue—they’re an architectural one. As I began analyzing the city’s food access map alongside high-rise zoning overlays, I saw an opportunity for the building itself to become part of the food infrastructure. The design evolved from there: we began treating the façade as a vertical farm bed, integrating hydroponic modules that aligned with solar orientation, ventilation paths, and structural grids. The farming layer became a performative skin—contributing to food equity, thermal regulation, and occupant well-being.
The water droplet-inspired form of Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community creates a striking visual impact - what influenced your decision to merge this natural aesthetic with advanced sustainable technologies?
The droplet form is both symbolic and functional. Water—its scarcity, collection, and reuse—became a central theme in our ecological performance goals. The tapering geometry mimics the aerodynamic efficiency of a droplet while maximizing wind exposure at higher altitudes for turbine placement. It also facilitates natural water flow along the façade for cloud harvesting and rainwater collection. This biomorphic shape allowed us to fuse form with function, reinforcing the idea that sustainable technologies don’t need to be hidden—they can become the architecture.
How does the diagrid exoskeleton structure of Eden Rise Vertical Eco Living Community not only support its mile-high elevation but also facilitate the integration of wind turbines and cloud harvesting systems?
The diagrid system was chosen for its high strength-to-weight ratio, ideal for extreme verticality. Beyond structural stability, it provides a geometrically expressive lattice that supports modular ecological inserts. The triangular modules naturally accommodate small-scale wind turbines—positioned in high-flow corridors—and act as anchor points for the atmospheric water collection membranes. The diagrid becomes an infrastructural scaffold: enabling environmental systems to plug into it without interrupting the building’s structural or aesthetic integrity.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Imagine a future where Chicago's skyline symbolizes sustainable living, with food grown just floors below, making "food deserts" a thing of the past. This project transforms urban life into vertical ecosystems, where skyscrapers become green spaces that nourish body and soul. Inspired by water droplet patterns, the mile-high community extends Chicago’s green belt into the sky. Vertical farms in the towers reduce food inequality and carbon footprints, powered by advanced green technologies.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The four conjoined towers are laterally supported by two layers of bracing structure to increase the structural depth. On the outer tube, based on a diagrid pattern spanning 25 stories in one unit, exoskeleton structures weave the building in a network of fluid lines that integrate mega-bracing with lateral support. Supported by the diagrid structure, the inner void allows more light and air into the tower.
- Tags
- Sustainable development, Super tall tower, vertical farming, vertical community, Renewable energy, Cultural integration, Circular economy
- Production Technology
- The tower incorporates a range of sustainable and green technologies that ensure self-sufficiency and environmental harmony, embedded seamlessly within its architectural design. Vertical farming, housed within the core tubular structure, addresses food deserts by producing fresh, local produce for the community. Cloud harvesting and rainwater collection systems, integrated into the tower’s outer shell, ensure efficient water recycling, while wind turbines are strategically placed along the exoskeleton to generate renewable energy. The breathable atrium and natural ventilation systems, enhanced by the diagrid structure, maximize airflow and natural light, reducing energy consumption while improving indoor environmental quality. These forward-thinking design elements push the boundaries of sustainability, setting a future example for urban architecture that not only coexists with nature but actively restores and enriches it.
- Design Challenge
- The project embraced exciting research challenges, turning them into opportunities for innovation. Integrating vertical farming into skyscrapers required advanced exploration of efficient agricultural systems, energy solutions, and water recycling, driving breakthroughs in sustainability. Balancing the structural demands of a mile-high building with green technologies like cloud harvesting and natural ventilation fostered creative engineering. Understanding food deserts also inspired in-depth community engagement to promote equitable food access.
- Research
- Food deserts in Chicago primarily affect low-income, urban neighborhoods, where residents often struggle to find affordable, nutritious food within a reasonable distance from their homes. The lack of accessible grocery stores and fresh produce has created significant health disparities, as many are forced to rely on convenience stores or fast food, which contribute to poor diet and related health issues. These food deserts exacerbate existing socio-economic inequalities and highlight the need for innovative solutions to provide sustainable, fresh food to underserved communities.
- Inspiration
- The project is inspired by two key aspects: programmatically, it addresses the food desert crisis in Chicago by integrating vertical farms into skyscrapers, creating a self-sustaining urban ecosystem where fresh food is grown locally. Formally, it draws inspiration from the city’s water landscape, with the tower’s organic shape inspired from a water droplet. This combination of program and form creates a sustainable community that tackles food inequality in Chicago.
- Project Duration
- The project is proposed as a future icon for the next half century of Chicago's skyline.
- Operation Flow
- The tower hosts a diverse array of programs, creating a dynamic vertical community that supports living, working, learning, and leisure. Residential units are integrated with commercial spaces, offering a complete urban lifestyle within the same structure, while hotels provide short-term accommodations with panoramic views of the city. Schools are embedded throughout the tower, ensuring education is accessible and integrated into daily life for families living within the complex. Multiple sky terraces, positioned at various levels, function as communal hubs where residents and visitors can enjoy green spaces, relax, or engage in recreational activities. These terraces sustain all functions and activities within the tower, providing essential outdoor areas that enhance the quality of life and foster community interaction, all while maintaining a strong connection to nature in an otherwise dense urban environment.
- Team Members
- YUHAN ZHANG
DREAMA SIMENG LIN - Image Credits
- YUHAN ZHANG
DREAMA SIMENG LIN
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