The article from L’Arena titled “Urban Environments Become Sustainable with Biodiversity,” showcases Milan’s Bosco Verticale, designed by Boeri Studio, as a virtuous example of cities integrating urban areas with natural spaces.
Just a few days after the European Union’s approval of the Nature Restoration Law, the article focuses on adopting sustainable development policies, protecting existing green spaces, and creating new habitats. These actions aim to safeguard urban biodiversity, referring to the variety of animal and plant species within cities.
In this context, Milan’s Bosco Veticale stands out as the first example of biodiversity architecture, hosting 800 trees on its facades (480 large and medium-sized trees, 300 smaller trees, 15,000 perennial and/or ground-covering plants, and 5,000 shrubs). This vegetation is equivalent to that of a 30,000 square meters forest concentrated on a 3,000 square meters urban surface.
Rather than being a mere architectural object, the presence of the plant component makes the Bosco Verticale comparable to a set of processes—partly natural, partly human-managed—that accompany the life and growth of the inhabited organism over time. The combination of these solutions goes beyond the concept, still fundamentally anthropocentric and technicist, of “sustainability” towards a new biological diversity. Ten years after its construction, the Vertical Forest has given rise to a habitat colonized by numerous animal species (including approximately 1,600 birds and butterflies), establishing an outpost for the spontaneous revegetation and fauna recolonization of the city.