The Niagara Escarpment is criss-crossed by human intervention, scarred with roads so inhospitable the natural formation seems to fight back with each falling rock. But one of Hamilton's top architects images it another way.

A team of four people at dpai architecture has designed the Fibroblast, a futuristic Elysium-like tower that stretches 570 metres into the sky and includes tiered parks, sky fountains, aerial forests and a bicycle trail that stretches into the sky.

The tower will never actually be made. But that's not the only reason architecture exists, said designer Petra Matar, who worked on the project with David Premi and two University of Waterloo architecture students.

Architecture is where art and engineering meet, she said. Like all art, this is supposed to make people think.

"A lot of the work we do in the office is very much based on the client," she said. "A client comes forward with a project, wants us to come up with a solution and build it. But there's a whole section of architecture that's conceptual."

"We created a project for ourselves in order to conceptually explore what that escarpment means to the city, the kind of divide it creates and what an important geological and geographical feature it is."

The tower includes rings that would accommodate pedestrian, cycling and vehicle traffic, with a bike path going from Corktown to Sam Lawrence parks. It envisions a bird sanctuary that stretches more than half a kilometre into the sky. Humans could only go as far as about 200 metres and look up at the bird sanctuary from a viewing platform.

One of Premi's most well known local projects is a redesign of the Hamilton Farmer's Market and Central Library.

Here are some renderings of Fibroblast:

(dpai architecture)

(dpai architecture)

(dpai architecture)

(dpai architecture)

(dpai architecture)

(dpai architecture)