The exposition featuring a selection of Vertical Forests, a know-how for which the Milan-based studio has received international recognition, and reflections on the most efficient sustainable strategies for contemporary cities, in particular on Urban Forestry, is open to public from March 21^st to June 30^th

If you asked an urban dweller to recall his favorite place in the city, a place where he feels at his ease, comfortable and relaxed, he would most likely think of a natural oasis: a park, a square or a rooftop garden. Ever more people choose urban lifestyle, but the proximity of living nature is yet an indispensable condition for a human being. If you look at the map of Manhattan its most impressive landmark is definitely Central park, the oasis of biodiversity in the middle of high-rise concrete jungle. Shift your sight north or south of Central park and you’ll soon realize that the density of the built environment would never allow us to have another big park anywhere close to business districts of the island. Most of contemporary metropoles face the same problem nowadays. It’s not enough even to bring nature into the city, the real impact on the quality of life should be measured by the proximity of the greenery to the citizens.

Once the urban thinkers stop planning the cities from satellite perspective and zoom in to the citizen’s point of view, the solution appears to lay just beneath the surface…of the facades! So, what if we imagined the high-rise buildings to host living nature, beside human beings?

The exhibition, hosted in the early XX century building, realized by Walker & Gillette, offers to the visitors an immersive experience into the world of living architecture: the main itinerary is introduced by the world map featuring the Vertical Forest and Forest City projects that Stefano Boeri Architetti is developing around the globe. Afterwards the visitor is invited to discover the evolution of the idea of the first Vertical Forest realized in Milan in 2014: from innovative structural solutions, as the ones applied to Trudo Vertical Forest and La Forêt Blanche to the futuristic vision of the Seeds on Mars. The experience is completed by the films projected on two wide screens: the idea of Climate change and the Urban Forestry as a countermeasure against it, told in an animated infographics and the drone flights showing one day at the Vertical Forest. Finally, exposition takes the visitor to another dimension through the Virtual Reality viewer featuring the trailer of the “360 Vertical Forests” produced by London-based studio Surround Vision. The main hall of the Consulate General hosts the satellite exposition featuring a selection of pictures of Milan Vertical Forest by high-rise photographer Dimitar Harizanov.