Yahoo – AFP,
Céline CORNU, October 8, 2017
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Milanese architect Stefano Boeri's leafy project is now being exported around
the world (AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA) |
Milan (AFP)
- 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 sunlight or 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
recalls.
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.
 |
Milanese
architect Stefano Boeri's leafy project is now being exported around the
world
(AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA)
|
'Best
Tall Building Worldwide'
Opened in
2014, the Vertical Forest won the prestigious Frankfurt International Highrise
Award, and the Chicago Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named it
Best Tall Building Worldwide.
"It's
a unique thing to live here, we're in direct contact with the plants while
being in the city centre and in a super modern skyscraper," says Simona
Pizzi, who can see the mountains from her 14th floor apartment.
"The
plants have developed a lot over the past three years, and we see them changing
with the seasons," adds the proud owner of an apple tree, where the white
flowers contrast magnificently with the green foliage.
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 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 centre in Miami.
"For
every human being living in the building, there are about two trees, 10 shrubs
and 40 plants," Boeri said.
The
future of housing?
The
vegetation soon transformed into a veritable wildlife park: 9,000 ladybirds
brought over from Germany to eat parasites -- to leave the plants pesticide
free -- multiplied over the space of a few weeks.
 |
Cherry,
apple and olive trees spill over balconies alongside beeches and larches,
selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference
for
sunlight or humidity (AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA)
|
"The
extraordinary thing that we did not expect was the incredible amount of birds
that nested here. We have small hawks on the roofs, and swifts that had
previously disappeared from Milan," 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.
The aim in
Eindhoven in the Netherlands is to swap the sort of luxury pads seen in the
Milan project -- which go for some 11,000 euros ($12,900) per square metre --
for social housing, a project Boeri says he's particularly keen on.
And because
the cost of the trees is low, it's not an unreasonable ambition, he says.
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.
"China
is now realising it faces the dramatic problem of air pollution, but also of
uncontrolled urbanisation, with cities growing out of suburbs, creating
megacities," he said.
"Every
year fifteen million peasants abandon the countryside to come to the city, we
have to come up with some answers, with new green cities," says Boeri, who
took part in the COP21 conference on climate change in Paris in 2015.
The
architect has not patented the Vertical Forest and has even written a book
revealing the secrets and techniques behind it, which he hopes will encourage a
new, greener way of developing cities.
