During a ceremony in Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology, the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) declared Italy's Stefano Boeri Architecti's greenery-clad Bosco Verticale the 2015 Best Tall Building Worldwide.
Completed in 2014, Bosco Verticale was shortlisted earlier this year during CBTUH's preliminary Best Tall Buildings awards and beat strong competition, including SOM's One World Trade Center.
We first reported on the Milan-based project, which translates as Vertical Forest, back in 2011. It comprises two greenery-clad residential towers which rise to a height of 382 ft (116 m) and 279 ft (85 m), respectively. The facade of both buildings features hundreds of trees and several thousand shrubs and plants housed in concrete planters. The architect says this living facade helps absorb CO2 and dust particles, produce oxygen, and reduce the effects of noise pollution.
"Yesterday I was giving a lecture here [at IIT], and it was very strange because the subject of the lecture was failures," said Boeri during a refreshingly frank acceptance speech. "I was trying to think about why architects are not used to talking about their failures – we prefer to hide, to remove our flubs, our fiascos, and our failures. Honestly, the reason we were able to do the Bosco Verticale was because we were able to learn from failures . . . and what I hope is that other attempts will learn from the mistakes we made with the Bosco Verticale."
Boeri is currently busy working on Bosco Verticale's successor in Switzerland, La Tour des Cedres.
Source: CTBUH via Arch Daily
