A Vertical Forest: Instructions Booklet for the Prototype of a Forest City
About this book
"A Vertical Forest: Instructions Booklet for the Prototype of a Forest City," published by Corraini Edizioni following the inauguration of the Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) twin towers in Milan in 2014, is Stefano Boeri's account of the conception, development, and realisation of one of the most significant and influential architectural projects of the twenty-first century. The book presents not only the Bosco Verticale project itself but the broader intellectual and ecological argument behind it: that the integration of trees and living plants into the structure of tall buildings is not merely an aesthetic gesture but a radical rethinking of the relationship between urban architecture and biodiversity. The Bosco Verticale consists of two residential towers in Milan's Isola district, rising 112 and 80 metres respectively, whose facades are entirely clad in trees, shrubs, and perennial plants.
The taller tower contains 480 medium and large trees and 300 smaller trees, along with 5,000 shrubs and 15,000 perennial and ground cover plants. The total plant biomass is equivalent to approximately 20,000 square metres of forest compressed into a vertical surface area of about 3,000 square metres—a ratio of roughly seven-to-one between horizontal forest and vertical tree density. The species were selected by botanist Laura Gatti in close collaboration with the architectural and engineering team, specifically for their capacity to withstand the climatic conditions of an exposed facade at variable heights, including wind, direct solar radiation, and cold temperatures.
The book is divided into four sections. The first, "Humans and Trees," presents Boeri's account of the genesis of the project: his conviction, formed over years of urban research, that the fundamental crisis of contemporary cities is the progressive displacement of biological diversity by built surfaces, and his belief that architecture has a responsibility not merely to reduce its own environmental footprint but to actively contribute to the restoration of urban biodiversity. The Bosco Verticale is presented as an attempt to answer the question: what would a genuinely biophilic urban building look like?
The second section, "Tales from the Vertical Forest," consists of short stories by Boeri that explore the imagined lives of the building's human inhabitants in their cohabitation with the trees—the sounds, textures, aromas, and micro-climatic effects of living among vegetation at altitude. These literary pieces serve both as narrative exploration and as a reminder that the project is ultimately concerned with human experience: with the quality of daily life in an urban environment that reintegrates nature into the living space of the city. The third section, "Learning from VF1," presents the technical lessons of the Bosco Verticale project and their application to future buildings.
The structural requirements of the project were formidable: each tree on the facade required a specifically engineered concrete planting trough capable of supporting the weight of the tree, its growing substrate, and the dynamic forces of wind loading. The irrigation system had to be designed to deliver water and nutrients to hundreds of trees at different heights and orientations. The selection and positioning of individual specimens required years of cultivation in nurseries specifically to prepare trees for the conditions of vertical urban exposure.
The fourth section, "Illustrated Dictionary of the Vertical Forest in 100 Items," presents a lexicon of the key concepts, species, materials, systems, and ideas that constitute the project's intellectual DNA—from the names of individual tree species and the properties of the growing substrate to the urban planning principles and ecological concepts that underpin the design philosophy. The Bosco Verticale won the International Highrise Award in 2014 and was named the Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) in 2015. The project has inspired a global movement of vegetated high-rise buildings—including versions in Nanjing (China), Utrecht (Netherlands), Paris, Lausanne, and Eindhoven—and has established Boeri as the principal international advocate for what he calls "forest cities": urban environments in which trees and vegetation are structural, not merely decorative, elements of the built fabric.
Sources: Corraini Edizioni; Stefano Boeri Architetti website; CTBUH; ArchEyes; Amazon.