Italy’s high-rise forests take root around the world
MILAN — As balconies bristle with tree branches and sunshine dapples the leaves of thousands of plants, two apartment buildings in the heart of Milan have almost disappeared under lush forest.
The brainchild of Milanese architect Stefano Boeri, the Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) uses more than 20,000 trees and plants to adorn the high-rise buildings from top to bottom — a project now being exported all over the world, from China to the Netherlands.
The two original leafy towers dominate the skyline in the northern Italian city, giving residents — including celebrities like footballer Ivan Perisic — an enviable view over the new district of Porta Nuova and beyond.
Cherry, apple and olive trees spill over balconies alongside beeches and larches, selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference for humidity.
Boeri said the idea came from his obsession with trees and determination to make them “an essential component of architecture”, particularly as a weapon to combat climate change.
“I was in Dubai in 2007 and I watched this city growing in the middle of the desert, with more than 200 glass towers multiplying the effect of heat,” he said.
He wanted instead to create something that “as well as welcoming life, can contribute to reducing pollution, because trees absorb microparticles and CO2”.
“Cities now produce about 75 percent of the CO2 present in the atmosphere. Bringing more trees into the city means fighting the enemy on the spot,” he said.
Boeri worked closely with botanists to create a nursery of a thousand trees that have been trained to grow under specific conditions.
The team faced numerous sunlight or challenges, from how the balconies should be structured to take the weight of the plants, to how to secure the tree roots and what needed to go into the soil.
They even carried out resistance tests at a hurricane center in Miami.
“For every human being living in the building, there are about two trees, 10 shrubs and 40 plants,” Boeri said.
The architect and his team are now working on a dozen or so Vertical Forest projects around the world, including Lausanne in Switzerland, Utrecht in the Netherlands, Sao Paolo in Brazil and Tirana in Albania.
He is also thinking big in China, where not only are two towers under construction in Nanjing and a hotel in the works in Shanghai, but there are plans for a “Forest City” of some 200 buildings in Liuzhou.