Italian architect Stefano Boeri's vertical forest buildings have now taken root in Milan, Switzerland, France and China. For his latest project, his firm is now returning to its homeland with plans to construct an "Urban Forest" consisting of riverside apartment blocks shrouded in plants and trees.
Planned for Treviso in Italy's north, the Cà delle Alzaie project will see three new apartment blocks built by the banks of the Sile River. Taking the place of a defunct factory, it will include three buildings, each standing seven stories tall, with two or three apartments on each level featuring either a two or three-bedroom layout.
The buildings are each carefully oriented in order to create ideal window placements, for reasons of both privacy and energy consumption. Both the north- and south-facing facades are shrouded in plants and trees, which much like Boeri's other vertical forest towers, are designed to cleanse the air, absorb C02 and produce oxygen at the same time.
"In place of an abandoned factory, three small buildings on the river bank host 120 trees and 400 bushes on their faces, which on their own are able to produce more than 2.7 tons of oxygen per year," says Boeri. "A discrete presence that recomposes the relationship between the city of Treviso, just a few steps away from the ancient walls, and the Sile River."
Source: Stefano Boeri Architetti
