Urban Hugs is a space for hugging: an installation that allows you to detach from the networks of social interactions and the loneliness of the big city for a few seconds to hug a friend, a stranger, someone you love, a child, the florist, the iimmigrant street vendor. A smaller version of the Radura project set up the year before at the Ca’ Grande in Milan, this prototype public space was created for the FuoriSalone 2017 in the Cortile d’Onore of the Pinacoteca di Brera. The micro-architecture imagined by Stefano Boeri Architetti consists of 95 cylinders of fir wood from Friuli, five metres high and six cm in diameter which make up a space that is both permeable and intimate. The result is an enclosure that filters and protects from the frenetic flow of people and traffic but given the slenderness of the stems does not completely exclude any perception of urban life. The slim columns are anchored to the ground thanks to a circular wooden platform with an outer diameter of 2.2 m and an internal one of 1 m. The result is an enclosure for two, in which mutual and liberating affection is accompanied by Piero Salvatori’s cello (the track is called “Visioni”) which generates a sonic atmosphere as a counterpoint to the context. Thanks to an integrated lighting system, once night falls, Urban Hugs lights up.