The Dutch firm MVRDV recently won a design competition to build a futuristic green city called Gwanggyo just south of Seoul, South Korea. One look at the design, and you're inclined to ask what the designers were smoking—only it's too trippy for that.

MVRDV's design is built around multiple high-rise, hill-shaped buildings with planted terraces on every floor. The result is an urban center disguised as a verdant park—think Shakespeare's Birnam Wood gone futuristic and ecological.

The benefits offered by these vertical parks will be practical as well as esthetic. They will improve the climate and reduce energy and water usage.

The city is designed to be wholly self-sufficient, with residents having every possible amenity within easy walking distance. A something-short-of-perfect-English MVRDV press release states, "Since the beginning of the millennium local nodes with a high density concentration of mixed program are used in Korean town planning. These nodes consist of a mix of public, retail, culture, housing, offices and leisure generating life in new metropolitan areas and encouraging further developments around them."

There is a term for this, apparently: the Power Center Strategy. Conceptually, it's the opposite of sprawl—build it high, green it up (both literally and figuratively), and do away with the need for an extensive transportation network by keeping everything very localized.

The city's recreational, cultural and commercial activities will be integrated into the buildings. These nodes will be connected by hollow cores forming atriums, which will serve as thoroughfares for community life.

It's an ambitious project. Once completed (and that's's a big assumption), the city will have capacity for 77,000 inhabitants. MVRDV is now refining its model and if things go according to schedule, construction will begin in 2011.

For those who are inclined to think green is boring, projects like Gyonggyo are powerful reminders to think again. Green isn't one culture, it's lots of different cultures—and also an enormous array of ideas, everything from a nuts-and-bolts report on greening corporate fleets by the Environmental Defense Fund  to MVDRV's wild and trippy vision.

I wonder if they're based in Amsterdam.