From Concrete to Canopy: How Mo Helmi Builds Urban Environments That Thrive

Cities keep growing, even as heat, smoke, flooding and stress reshape what daily life feels like.As more people move into dense neighborhoods, green space increasingly looks less like a luxury and more like core infrastructure.

For Mo Helmi, a landscape artist and founder of Tricoastal Scapes, the future of urban life depends on how well cities learn to live with nature again.“Part of my work’s drive is believing that the importance of merging nature and science has never been as important as it is now in our urban environments,” he says.

His case is direct.“Almost 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by the year 2050.”  If you plan, build or move through those spaces every day, that statistic becomes personal.

Why Biophilic Design Matters Now Helmi argues that urban greening cannot stay at the level of surface gestures.Nature has to function.

He designs green spaces that look beautiful, but also cool the air, support biodiversity and create places where people can exhale.  “I saw an important gap in the landscape design industry,” he says, describing projects that claim sustainability while treating it as an add-on.His goal became clear: create spaces that benefit people physically and mentally while supporting biodiversity and the environment, without sacrificing the beauty of the design.

That balance shapes his approach to biophilic urbanism, where plants, soil, and water management work as living systems over time.For Helmi, landscapes do not sit beside architecture.

They help a city stay livable.Design as Infrastructure, Not Ornament Helmi’s path into landscape design began in a different kind of studio.

He spent 15 years in fashion design and editorials in London and Milan.“Plants and gardens were always a passion and a source of inspiration for me during my fashion career,” he says.

That background taught him how people respond to aesthetics, texture, and narrative.It also taught him how...