Vertical Forest

Bosco Verticale — two residential towers of 110 and 80 metres in Milan's Porta Nuova district — is the signature project of Italian architect Stefano Boeri. The facades function as a vertical forest: over 900 trees, 5,000 shrubs and around 11,000 ground-cover plants are embedded directly into the cantilevered balconies, equivalent to roughly 20,000 square metres of woodland compressed into vertical form. Completed in 2013 and opened in October 2014, the towers won the International Highrise Award the following year and have since become a global reference for biophilic urban architecture. The experience from street level shifts dramatically with the seasons — in summer the greenery is dense enough that the concrete structure nearly disappears behind foliage, while autumn turns the towers a patchwork of amber and rust.