The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung publishes an interview with urban planner Andrea Gebhard on the climate benefits of trees and plants, also in relation to architecture, citing Milan’s Bosco Verticale (Boeri Studio).
Titled Green Facades to Combat Heat, the article provides an overview of the ecosystem services of living nature, up to the advantages of integrating it into architecture.
“A famous example is Milan’s Bosco Verticale, two green residential skyscrapers. Is it just a matter of façade, or are these truly significant green facades?
I’d say both. I’ve seen it twice already. It’s really complex, with gardeners having to climb up to maintain the plants. And all the concrete needed for the plant containers obviously has its own CO₂ footprint. But I find the project, as an idea and an attitude—simply attempting something like this—absolutely remarkable,” comments Gebhard.
The project consists of two residential towers, 110 and 76 meters tall, located in central Milan, in the Porta Nuova district. Together, they host 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 20,000 plants belonging to around 100 different species, distributed according to the sunlight exposure of the facades.
The Bosco Verticale houses vegetation equivalent to about five hectares of forest on flat land, but concentrated on a surface of roughly 1,000 square meters—fifty times smaller. The environmental benefits are numerous: absorption of fine dust and CO₂, oxygen production, optimized water management, noise reduction, and improved quality of life—for people, plants, and animals alike.