Bosco Verticale: futuristic skycrapers for urban biodiversity

Air pollution is the single biggest environmental health risk the world faces today, with outdoor pollution linked to 3 million deaths every year. Green designers and eco engineers Worldwide try to stop it with all kinds of air-purifying solutions. One of these creatives is the arquitect Stefano Boeri, who has designed Bosco Verticale, futuristic skycrapers to soak up urban air pollution, boost biodiversity and produce clean oxygen.

We all can continue to have dreams about sustainability and a healthier urban living in the megacities of today, while not having to change a single pattern of our consumer-driven experience. As consequence, green Designers all over the World are racing to come up with air-purifying solutions, such as eco-bikes or impressive green-houses.

Bosco Verticale High-Rise

Bosco Verticale High-Rise, designed by the Italian architect Stefano Boeri, is a project for the environmental survival of contemporary cities. These tower for trees inhabited by humans, multiplies the number of trees in cities. 

Concretely, this concept of residential high-rises packed with greenery can help cities build for density while improving air quality. The first Bosco Verticale were realized in 2014 in the Porta Nuova Isola area of Milan. It included two towers with over 100 apartments to host nearly 500 medium and large trees, 300 small trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 plants. The soil contained in the pots is a mix of agricultural soil, organic matter and volcanic material that allows the reduction of the volume weighting on the perimeter of the balconies. Such diversity and typology of plant species within the urban centre works as a point of reference and a tool for urban policies directed to the inclusion of plant and animal species inside the man-made urban context, promoting the development of different urban biodiversity dissemination sites.

The 20,000 trees and plants across this pair of towers can transform approximately 25 tons of carbon dioxide into oxygen every year. Trees can also keep temperatures cool indoors and filter out fine dust particles and noise pollution from traffic below.

Vertical Foresting around the World

The prices for these aparments range between 640.000 euros for a low level flat of 80 square meter up to 2 million for a spacious 200 square meter penthouse.

Stefano Boeri is currently working on new Vertical Forests across Europe -almost 30, including cities as Barcelona, Frankfurt, Paris…- and in China, including an ambitious Forest City in the city of Nanjing. Meanwhile, similar projects are being proposed and developed all the time, from a spiraling high-rise in Taiwan that is expected to contain 23,000 trees when complete to new tree-tower variations, such as Trudo Vertical Forest in Strijp-S, Eindhoven, Netherlands.

+ info: Stefano Boeri