The special Design issue of Corriere della Sera, in the 20th November 2024 issue entitled ‘Nature-Architecture: A Possible Utopia?’, opens the issue with Stefano Boeri, putting on its cover the Shijiazhuang Forest City project, designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti for the city Shijiazhuang in China.
Shenzhen and other cities, are reaching a population of 60 million people. Shijiazhuang for its part, has a sad record: it is the city with the highest rate of air pollution in China. A pall of smog and soot rising only a few days a year. The Forest City in Shijiazhuang will be a new city for 100,000 inhabitants. A city of a new generation, capable of becoming a model of sustainable growth in a large country seeing, each year, 14 million farmers migrating to the cities.
“Our vision is to create […] an archipelago of small, high-density Forest-Cities, surrounded by greenery and agricultural fields, which minimise land consumption,” says Stefano Boeri. “Ten years after the inauguration of the Vertical Forest in Milan, the idea of a territory dotted with urban ecosystems, where living nature meets architecture, is no longer just a utopia”.
The Forest City of Shijiazhuang is the prototype of a new generation of small, compact and green cities, consisting of dozens of tall, medium-sized buildings – the so-called Vertical Forests.