The German magazine Focus Online, dedicated to sustainability and ecology, publishes an interview by Florian Reiter with Stefano Boeri on the occasion of his participation in the DLD Conference in Munich.
The article focuses on the design philosophy of Stefano Boeri Architetti, starting from the concept of Milan’s Bosco Verticale as a home for trees, animals, and also humans – treating living nature as an integral part of architecture, as full-fledged inhabitants of the building.
The piece also presents the Trudo Vertical Forest and Wonderwoods Vertical Forest projects, in Eindhoven and Utrecht, where this focus on all inhabitants is key: in the first case dedicating the entire building to social housing, allowing young couples and students to interact with and benefit from greenery; in the second case including, for example, holes in the façades to allow native bird species to nest and thereby increase the building’s biodiversity.
The interview concludes with reflections on the future challenges of architectural design, ranging from the need for shading – given increasingly hot summer temperatures – to the enhancement of biodiversity:
“Modern architecture has been strongly influenced by glass façades. There was a great need for light, clarity, and transparency. And I believe this was a fantastic step in the history of architecture. But I think that now we are starting to look at things from a different perspective, that we are slowly understanding how much we need nature, the entire biodiversity, down to the level of bacteria,” says Stefano Boeri.
Read the full article here: Focus Online – Interview with Stefano Boeri