About the work

The earth did not stop growing. It just changed what it grew.

In Terraviva, Di Nicolantonio presents the most ecologically integrated vision in the entire Futuropia Cities series a vertical ecosystem in which the boundary between living organism and built structure has been permanently, irreversibly dissolved. A great twisted trunk erupts from the ground carrying inhabited disc platforms at successive heights, each level a self-contained biome of cultivated green. Horizontal bridges extend outward like branches finding light. Oval pod structures nestle at ground level like seeds that have already decided what they will become.

This is not architecture with a sustainability certificate. This is architecture that has internalised ecology as its operating system where the structural logic is photosynthesis, where the load-bearing element is root mass, where the building envelope is a canopy. Every surface that can hold soil, holds soil. Every volume that can breathe, breathes.

Di Nicolantonio draws here from the trajectory of the most urgent research in contemporary urbanism vertical forests, living buildings, regenerative design, the emerging discipline of biomimetic architecture that looks to forest ecosystems not for aesthetic inspiration but for structural and metabolic models. Terraviva is where that research arrives, drawn by hand, at full scale.

In the Futuropia universe, Terraviva is the ecological district of Verdania the quarter where the city and the forest became the same thing, and nobody can remember which came first.

An original drawing from the Futuropia Cities series by artist-futurist Sébastien Di Nicolantonio.

Edition Unique original — one of a kind

Signature Hand-signed by the artist

Authentication Sold with certificate of authenticity and gallery invoice

Technique Original drawing — pen and watercolor on paper

Dimensions 29.7 × 42 cm — A3 format

Framing Unframed — framing available upon request