As climate change makes wildfires a more common and severe threat to ecosystems, Italian architect Alberto Roncelli has come up with a design for a dissolving ‘skyscraper’ that would naturally spread nutrients and seeds to ravaged forests — all in a bid to regenerate ecosystems destroyed by wildfires.

Located in the center of a burnt ecosystem — ideally, on an elevated point — the Regenera project would disperse vital nutrients and seeds through winds as it dissipates, and provide a temporary shelter for birds and small-size animals.

The skyscraper embraces the erosion of its own structure and its consequent dissolution to transform and spread itself into the ecosystem. During the initials phases, a laboratory on the ground level is dedicated to monitoring the ongoing progress of ecosystem regeneration. Next, the scientists abandon the crumbling structure, allowing it to serve as shelter for birds and small animals as it disintegrates through wind and the passage of time.

“The new paradigm suggested by Regenera is the possibility to carefully program and diversify each part of the structure, defining a life cycle determined by erosion and constant transformation,” writes Roncelli in an article for designboom. According to the architect, for the design to be truly effective, he would need to work together with engineers, chemists, biologists, and farmers to determine ‘the quantity and variety of nutrients, erosion time, and wind reaction’ for each tower.

Roncelli goes on to describe Regenera as a “manifesto for a new possible way of relating architecture and nature, structure and ecosystem, time and erosion, skyscrapers and forests.”

Image source: designboom