Today’s artefacts, from small devices to buildings and cities, are cyber-physical systems, with tightly interwoven material and computational parts. Currently, we build such systems, laboriously placing material components, laboriously programming computational ones, laboriously integrating the parts, laboriously maintaining the resulting structures, component by component. The results are often difficult to maintain, change, and reconfigure. Even “soft”ware is brittle and non-trivial to adapt and change.

The picture is different if we look to nature. Trees grow, adapting their form and function to the environmental conditions, and trees self-repair, using the same mechanisms as for growth. These properties allow trees to be gardened—planted, fed, pruned, trained—to meet human needs.

Adding in natural processes, or nature-inspired processes, result in cyber-bio-physical systems (which we dub zoetic systems, for short). Here I will discuss what such zoetic systems might look like, and outline a conceptual unconventional embodied computational architecture framework. This is based on a plant growth metaphor, for evolving and engineering zoetic ‘seeds’, then growing these seeds into mature zoetic systems, and gardening the physically growing systems in order to adapt them to specific needs. With such an approach, could we grow a skyscraper?