For two thousand years, cities have sealed the ground beneath concrete, asphalt and steel. Under that seal, the city's metabolism breaks: rain runs off instead of soaking in, heat builds instead of dissipating, and the ground stops breathing. Inspired by Everyday Urbanism and the Gaia hypothesis, Neo-Metabolism turns back to the ground beneath the city: soil.

Spoil excavated by London's infrastructure projects is reclaimed as a building material. Directionally pressed and left unfired, it becomes living panels that carry vegetation and replace the glass curtain wall, the city's most sealed and overheated skin. Heat mapping and a thermal survey of façades locate where the panels are needed, and each panel's form is tuned by generative AI to the temperature and humidity of its position.

Each panel is a small metabolic engine, cooling the façade by evaporation, holding rain and inviting roots and urban life back into the wall. Embedded sensors sync each panel to a digital twin in Unreal Engine, driven by live weather, where a multi-agent system weighs what each panel needs. The system judges; a person decides. At the end of its life, the panel returns to the soil.