Chimera design team has designed a spiraling skyscraper solution for New York City inspired by the Mangrove Tree habitat. SuckerPUNCH did a profile of their project named Mangalcity here as well as Inhabitat here. Both great posts with lots of insight. From the various readings the main motivation for this degree of capsulation was to allow every single pod to adapt to its environment and context independently, similar to how each leaf or branch on a tree works its hardest adapt on its own. You can see the entire site with the various towers in the clay rendering below…
The interior spaces and resulting negative space are truly stunning. The super structure holding the pods seems highly flexible and airy. Chimera design team also mentioned in their interview they were inspired by the Phyllotaxis phenomena where plants distribute leaves on a branch in various patterns in response to their environment.
