Those who believe that Milan is only gray smoke, billboards and nightlife are wrong.
For years now there has been a turnaround, a return to greenery, a need for the city to host corners of nature. It is the awareness of the enormous benefits that the presence of plants in urban spaces leads to giving rise to redevelopment and renewal projects that have the main subject in the green. And this is how we witness the creation of parks and gardens, flowered corners or even more extreme and unique projects. Among the latter, it is impossible not to mention the Vertical Forest.
The iconic Bosco Verticale - or Vertical Forest - completed in 2014 by Stefano Boeri Architects in Milan, Italy, is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable buildings of the last decade. A masterpiece of BioArchitettura. It is often used as an inspirational image for the green building movement due to its pioneering incorporation of a vertical forest in 44 floors through two towers
The highest tower, 200 meters high, crowned at the top by a green lantern, will be used as offices (from the eighth to the thirty-fifth floor) and will include a museum, a green architecture school and a private rooftop club. The second tower, 108 meters long, will house a Hyatt chain hotel with 247 rooms of different sizes (from 35 square meters to 150 square meters) and a swimming pool on the top floor. In the base, 20 meters high, there will be commercial, recreational and educational functions, including multi-brand shops, a food market, restaurants, conference hall and spaces for exhibitions.
There have been numerous awards won by the Vertical Forest. Including in 2014 the International Highrise Award, an international competition for the award of the most beautiful skyscraper in the world, where the building was chosen among eight hundred skyscrapers on all continents with the following motivation: "excellent example of revitalization of an urban center ". In 2015, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat was recognized as the "most beautiful and innovative skyscraper in the world" as part of the competition promoted by the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.