[ ⋇ ] There are designed projects in the built environment where urbanism is “forest.” These artworks, buildings, landscapes, and development strategies have in common the idea of an underlying matrix, or a surrounding substance and foundation, made of a continuing and resilient ecosystem of trees, understory vegetation, wildlife, soils and microorganisms, terrestrial and atmospheric elements, and water cycling. The designers of these projects treat forest as both a base condition and a protective overlay for commercial, residential, industrial, and civic programs in even the most densely populated urban areas. In these projects forest is an architectural vernacular, or a material and design language that has been tested, studied, and known for as long as humans have existed. The phenomenon of the “forest aesthetic,” … (VanderGoot 2018), is used to describe these projects of the forest.

( VanderGoot, Jana. “Emergence of the Forest Aesthetic and the Idea of Living within Ecosystem Curves”, BIOPHILIC CITIES JOURNAL / BIOPHILIC DESIGN. )