How high-rise forests can transform city life – and make us happier

10 years have passed since the creation of the first vertical forest, the vertical bosco of Milan. How has other buildings inspired and has affected the happiness and health of its residents?

In 2007, the Italian architect Stefano Boeri witnessed the frantic construction of a city in the Dubai desert dominated by skyscrapers that leave energy covered with glass, ceramics and metal. All these materials, he tells the BBC, “reflected sunlight, generating heat in the air and especially in the urban land, where pedestrians walked.” Three thousand miles away, he had just started working in his own design for two very high buildings in a careless area or in northern Milan. “Suddenly, it occurred to me to create two biological towers … not covered with glass, but with leaves,” he says. The design would invite fauna and flora to this industrial wasteland and cool the air inside and out, offering a new radical architectural prototype that, he explains, “integrates living nature as a constitutional part of it.” The surprising result was the first “vertical forest” of the world.

The winning design of multiple awards is now 10 years old, its plants maintained by “flying gardens” exploited next to the buildings, and their occupants up to three cooler degrees, since the foliage releases water vapor and filters the sunlight. To commemorate this anniversary, the Stefano Boeri Architetti architecture firm has launched a new book, Bosco Verticallale: morphology of a vertical forest, with essays of the main voices that work at the intersition of nature and architecture, throughout Behyidida. The book draws the evolution of the project and the principles it defends, and, for example, the editors, Rizzoli “celebrates an architectural work that has become the symbol of a renewed collective for the care of the environment and the world of plants.”

In an investment of the usual architectural hierarchies, the book describes the vertical forest as “a home for trees and birds, which also houses humans.” It is based on philosophies and texts that have influenced it, such as the secret life of the trees (2006) by the British biologist Colin Tudge, a work that explains the crucial role that trees play in our lives in scarcity. He also quotes the British ethologist Dame Jane Goodall. As populations increase, he says: “It is desperately important that growth is accompanied by new incentives to bring the natural world to existing cities and the planning of new ones.”

Since the end of the vertical forest of Milan, a green wave of rich construction in plants has begun to reintroduce nature in our cities, from Dubai to Denver, Colorado; Antwerp to Arlington, Virginia; With the first vertical forest of Africa scheduled to start in Cairo at the end of this year. Responding to critics who doubted the affordability of the concept is the vertical trude forest in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (completed 2021), a social housing project with a rental limit of € 600 (£ 510) per month.

In Montpellier, France, one third of the Secret Gardens, a wooded residential development designed by Vincent Callebaut Architectures, Paris, and to complete at the end of this year, it will be reserved for affordable homes. When integrating practices such as the agriculture of the roof and the recycling of water, the secret gardens “addresses the climatic crisis restoring the connection of human nature,” says Vincent Callebaut to the BBC. “By transforming residents into urban gardeners and facades into carbon sinks, this building shows that ecology is not a restriction but a philosophy of lifestyle,” he says.

The power of these extraordinary structures to alter the way people live and feel is essential for their design. One of the last designs of Vincent Callebaut Architectures is the Rainbow Tree (Cebu, the Philippines), inspired by the psychedelic colors of the native of the bark of the eucalyptus tree of the rainbow. But the “tree” requires the collaboration of the residents of each of its 300 apartments to maintain its striking flora. This, together with its greenhouses and shared urban hives, helps “promote social ties,” says Callebaut, creating a sense of community and connection.

This notion that biophilic design (design that is based on the innate connection of humans with nature) can positively affect our well -being is backed by recent investigations. A study by the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands reported that the presence of plants in a work environment not only improved the attractiveness of the work space, but also increased employee satisfaction. The workers also noticed the improved air quality and reported less complaints related to health.

In Wales, a 10 -year study that analyzes the presence of anxiety and depression in 2.3 million medical records, found that the surroundings of the greenest home were associated with 40% less anxiety and depression than those living in less green areas. People in poorest areas benefited more, with access to green spaces and water reducing the risk of anxiety and depression by 10% (6% in richer areas).

It may not be surprising, then, that biophilic concepts are in charge for new hospitals. Callebaut’s hospiwood 21, in la Louvière, Belgium, Says the Architect, “Incorporates therapeutic vertical forest using greenery to reduces patient stress and enhance recovery”, and is Furished with a soothility interior full full full full full interior interior full full full full full full full full full full full full full full full full full full full war blacc pay blabccalaccalaccalaccalaccala Neb blab Necc Necc Necc Necc Necc Negedly at theined Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Inner Fullior Fullior Fullior Fullior Interior Fullior Internal Complete Complete Complete Complete Complete Internal Complete Complete Internal Complete Complete the biofily is part of a rethinking of care facilities, says Boeri, that “opens a new perspective on rehabilitation, going beyond the traditional concept of a long -term installation for a long -term installation and become a true ESP than a true species. “

In fact, green tendrils or biophilic design are dragging in a wide range of buildings. Jewel Changi airport, the leisure complex and the 10 -story retail complex of Singapore, has been open to both passengers and air visitors since 2019, and has lush covered forests that include 1,400 trees, as well as the highest interior cascade in the world (40m). In Amsterdam, the sustainable bamboo interior of the Yakarta Hotel (founded 2018) presents a tropical garden in its central atrium that, off by rainwater from the roof, progresses quickly to its 30 -meter high roof. One hour away in Rotterdam, an open forest, almost 40 meters above ground level, crown the deposit, a public access storage installation for the fast art collection of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, and form like a giant cauldron with a mirror.

In addition to lifting our spirits, high -height forests can play an important role in the combination of climate change. Vincent Callebaut’s Tao Zhu Yuan in Taipei, Taiwan, 21-Floor Tower That Is Shaped Like Dna’s Double Helix, was completed in 2024. STIs 23,000 plants absorb an estimated 130 tons of cooling, and they Thighing and their, and theirs and their, and theirs air, and theirs and presented and they A., sisses, them, them, they and them A. and their 30%. The building presents rotary balconies to maximize exposure to the sun, while ventilation chimneys in its nucleus reflect the interest of Callebaut in biomimetics (the emulation of nature systems to provide solutions to human problems) and work very similar to a lung, attracting the air at its base, purifying it and then expel it at the top.

Much higher than wide and high height forests, also minimize soil sealing, releasing land for nature and reducing the risk of flooding. “My projects embody a vision where cities are no longer climatic problems but life solutions,” says Callebaut. Far from nature being “an obstacle or an idea of ​​the last ornamental moment,” is the guiding principle of design. The buildings now act, he says, as “inhabited trees … that absorb CO2, produce energy and take refuge biodiversity.” Responding to two important contemporary crises, global warming and decreased mental health, biophilic buildings are already being provided as part of completely forest cities. In Liuzhou, in the province of Guangxi of China, one of the worst regions of the world for Smog, the futuristic forestry of Stefano Boeri, which houses around 30,000 inhabitants and that generates all the energy, has been approved and is waiting for construction; While the city of Forest Smart Forest of the firm in Mexico, which plans to prohibit vehicles with combustion, is also waiting for starting orders.

Back in Milan, the building that began everything, with its solar ramp panels, is indisputably as a tree, harvest its energy from the sun and elaborates the groundwater. “Nature is not something that exists in an immemorial adjustment,” writes the author and philosopher Emanual cook in the book. “It is and always will be our technological future.” As for Boeri, the twin vertical forests that brought to life in Milan are not only buildings, he writes, but “a political manifesto” with “a simple and popular message: the living nature has to re -inhabits consistent spaces.”