The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed an irreversible awareness of the fragility of the human being, from technocratic presumptions of domination over nature to intellectual inability to predict. In search of a new normality, Stefano Boeri Architetti proposes a real change of paradigm and a challenge consisting in increasing attention to trees, greenery, air, forests and non-urbanized territories, to establish a sustainable way of living.

De-synchronize the times of urban life, rethink of public and domestic spaces, radically change the mobility system, encourage of the use of renewable energy,  create green architecture, rebuild a relationship of reciprocity with the thousands of abandoned villages scattered on the slopes of the Alps and on the Apennine ridge, enhancing biodiversity by implementing our heritage of woods and forests – these are some of the solutions that Stefano Boeri architetti proposes for a greener and more sustainable future.

Green Obsession is a philosophy of life, an innovative and sustainable way of conceiving cities, where living nature becomes the real protagonist, equal to the human being. The central element of this vision is the Vertical Forest, a new model of sustainable residence developed in height, completely covered with trees and plants. Vertical Forest has won numerous international awards, including the High Rise Building Award, the CTBUH Award, as Best Tall Building Worldwide. With the residential towers of Milan, inhabited since 2014 and the buildings of Eindhoven (the first Vertical Forest conceived as social housing) and Nanjing which will be completed by the end of 2021, the studio has more than 20 projects based on this model in the phase of design or implementation all over the world.

The corner dedicated to the design thought of Stefano Boeri Architetti, that has always focused on the coexistence of nature with the built environment through a new model of sustainable building, is part of the space of the new Casa 500 which addresses the issue of sustainability from the point of view of mobility and a conscious production chain. The exhibition presents a video sequence that portrays Milan’s Vertical Forest over the years and seasons, the iconic building that has become a new model of sustainable architecture, together with four 1:50 scale models of some buildings conceived by the studio all over the world following the Milanese prototype.

The exhibition dialogues with the unique and evocative context of the Lingotto parabolic crowning the historic building that housed the Fiat factory, and is part of the story of the union between innovation and continuity that the Casa 500 itself represents.