Skip to main content

From Milan to Mars, Architect Stefano Boeri is Creating Vertical Forests

Stefano Boeri Architetti

For years now, major cities around the world have been suffering from housing shortages. Many architects have been coming up with clever solutions, dreaming up everything from micro apartments to turning unexpected structures into homes. However, it seems the best ideas are coming from sci-fi movies like Bladerunner which show the future of cities as towering skyscrapers packed with efficiency apartments. Or perhaps the solution to dealing with overpopulation is colonizing Mars and the asteroid belt like on the show The Expanse. Architect Stefano Boeri sees the future as both.

However, unlike the cold, dirty, lifeless concrete towers science fiction sees as the future of housing, Boeri envisions a landscape of high-rise forests, bringing life to concrete, urban jungles.

Recommended Videos

With the shocking news that we only have until 2030 to stop “catastrophic climate change,” people around the world are looking at what we can do right now to save the planet before it’s too late. For years, architects have been striving to develop sustainable structures that aren’t just low-impact, but help to improve the quality of the environment in which they are built. Based in Italy, Boeri has already begun a process of developing innovative residential structures that bring the forests back to cities. He calls them Vertical Forests and he sees this as the future of housing and a solution to stopping climate change all rolled into one.

His vision has already been realized in Milan, with the construction of two of his Vertical Forest towers. In total, the towers contain 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 15,000 plants. The density of all this foliage means that the towers create their own microclimate which rids the air of dust and CO2 while producing oxygen and humidity. The Vertical Forests also become a mini ecosystem in their own right, attracting birds and insects which help to pollinate the plants and keep the forest thriving.

The positive environmental impact isn’t the only benefit brought by the Vertical Forests. The people who live inside of the towers get to enjoy beautiful city views while being protected from the sun’s harmful rays. The heavy foliage provides acoustic buffering from the loud noises of the city. And there is also the advantage of squeezing more housing into a smaller area by going up rather than trying to spread out.

While his hometown of Milan was the testing ground for the Vertical Forests, Boeri has been hard at work planning towers for other major cities and beyond. Construction is already underway in several cities throughout the world including Beijing and Paris.

But Boeri is not stopping there.

He’s developing ideas for Vertical Forests that can be built on Mars once humans finally reach the red planet. The project, dubbed  “Vertical Forest Seeds on Mars,” is aiming for a “new Shanghai” to be built in the year 2117. So, while he won’t be around to see this one to fruition, Boeri is laying the groundwork so future generations can ensure humanity’s survival should we ever need to leave this planet.

Kelsey Machado
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kelsey is a professional interior designer with over a decade of experience in the design field. With a passion for…
Tony Soprano vs. Walter White: Who is the ultimate antihero?
TV's biggest heavyweights duke it out for the antihero crown
Breaking bad season 4 screen shot

Sports fans often debate between two heavyweight legends. For basketball, it's LeBron James and Michael Jordan. Switching to tennis, you have Roger Federer fans and Rafael Nadal diehards. Debates like these are ingrained in the culture of athletics, but TV fans have their own version of this sparring match.

Tony Soprano from The Sopranos and Walter White from Breaking Bad are the two characters who still send shockwaves through every drama in the 21st century. These men were the perfect mix of good and evil. They navigated family life and the criminal underworld with cunning intelligence and ruthless risk-taking. Every show with morally gray characters at the center owes its storyboard to Walter and Tony, but which character deserves the antihero crown? This is Tony Soprano vs. Walter White for all the marbles.
Who was the more complex character?

Read more
Learn how to smoke a pipe the proper way with our guide for beginners
Let us show you the classy way to smoke a pipe
Packing a pipe

Pipe smoking is the most aesthetically distinguished way to enjoy tobacco, but you lose the classy effect if you don’t know how to smoke a pipe properly. Smoking a pipe has become a lost art, and these days, most people who engage in pipe smoking do so to achieve a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps your grandfather enjoyed a puff now and again paired with a good stiff whiskey, or maybe your goal is to emulate a pipe-smoking artist.

I know that I enjoy a good puff on a pipe now and then, and knowing the right way to enjoy a pipe has made the experience much more pleasurable for for me. Whatever the case, if you intend to take up the time-honored tradition of unwinding with a pipe like me, you should learn how to smoke a pipe the right way. And smoking a pipe is very different than smoking a cigar (except you shouldn't be inhaling either).

Read more
Don’t ruin your cigars: here’s how to properly season a new humidor
Seasoning secrets every cigar lover could use
faceless man presenting a cigar humidor with cigars inside with gloved hands

If you're a newcomer to the world of cigars or just bought a brand-new humidor, you'll need to season it. And no, I'm not saying to add salt and pepper to it. If you've never heard of it, you might ask, "What is seasoning for a humidor?"

Don't think you need to flavor the box or anything — seasoning is really about getting the wood inside your humidor so as not to rob your cigars of precious moisture. Easy to understand, and getting it done is relatively straightforward as well. The trick is figuring out the "why," and we'll get into that in a bit. But let's first discuss seasoning a humidor.

Read more