In La Repubblica, in an article by Alberto Saibene entitled ‘The portrait of Milan reflected in drawings that explore its rituals’, the book by architect and designer Ugo La Pietra, Storie Metropolitane (Metropolitan Stories), is presented; among the drawings accompanying the text, the Vertical Forest also appears.
The book is a collection of stories, including texts and illustrations, in which La Pietra describes today’s Milan, between ‘the new things’ and ‘the old things’.
The Vertical Forest, the prototype-building of a new architecture of biodiversity, which no longer places man alone at the centre, but the relationship between man and other living species, appears in the book as an illustration and as the setting for two metropolitan stories.
The Vertical Forest, located in Milan in the Porta Nuova area, is made up of two towers, 80 and 112 m high, housing a total of 800 trees (480 first and second size trees, 300 smaller ones, 15,000 perennials and/or ground cover plants and 5,000 shrubs). A vegetation equivalent to that of 30,000 square metres of forest and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square metres of urban area.
In contrast to ‘mineral’ façades made of glass or stone, the vegetal screen of the Vertical Forest does not reflect or amplify the sun’s rays, but filters them, generating a cosy indoor microclimate without harmful effects on the environment. At the same time, the green curtain ‘regulates’ humidity, produces oxygen and absorbs CO2 and fine dust.
To read the full article, see La Repubblica (ed. Milan), August 7th, 2024. https://milano.repubblica.it/