The author of the famous Milan's Vertical Forest, architect Stefano Boeri, came to Moscow to take part in the Moscow Urban Forum and at the same time talk to us about green architecture, cities of the future and the prospects of Moscow.
Stefano Boeri was born in 1956 in Milan, in the family of one of the first Italian women architects, Chini Boeri - the beginning of a definitely promising. Stefano graduated from the Polytechnic University of Milan, opened an architectural bureau with partners and for a long time was involved in renovation projects all over Europe. From 2004 to 2006 he was editor-in-chief of the oldest architectural magazine Domus, and in 2008 he founded his own bureau Stefano Boeri Architetti. He combines architectural practice with teaching at the Polytechnic University of Milan and continuous research work.
Stefano became really famous all over the world after his first project "Vertical Forest" (Bosco Verticale) - the new business card of Milan. The green skyscrapers became incredibly popular, and the architect began to replicate them. Vertical forests are now growing in other cities around the world - Lausanne, Nanjing, Shenzhen and Shanghai - where the office has a second office.
Stefano Boeri has dozens of different projects to his credit, including the elegant, Mediterranean-inspired Villa Méditerranée in Marseille and the futuristic "Art Incubator" in Milan, but still a green architecture and now green cities. Just a week ago, the municipality of Liuzhou, a Chinese city district, approved Stefano Boeri's project for the first "forest city", in which absolutely all buildings will be covered with plants and trees. The city itself will be able to combat air pollution and produce about 900 tons of oxygen annually.
According to Stefano, now the bureau is engaged in a full range of architectural works - from furniture design to the creation of new cities. An important part of this work is research. They always try to keep up with the times and use new technologies. Now they focus on biodiversity and sustainable architecture. By biodiversity, we mean new plant species that can be used in green projects. The main thing is to work in the system.
Stefano's passion for trees dates back to childhood. And this passion is not for greenery in general, but for trees. He was inspired by many things. One of the main ones is Italo Calvino's book "The Baron on the Tree" about a little boy who decided to leave home and live on the tree. The place where the little baron decided to hide in the woods is next to my grandfather's birthplace, in Liguria. His mother (Italian designer and architect Chini Boeri - Editor's note) built a house in the woods near Milan in the early 1970s, the construction of which did not damage any of the trees, and some of them became part of the interior.
Another important source of inspiration is the Viennese house of architect Friedrich Hundertwasser. The architect created a cascade house, roofs, terrace and even some rooms covered with soil and trees growing in the middle of the apartments - incredible! Adriano Celentano also wrote the song "Un albero di trenta piani" in 1972, which I like very much. That's why "Vertical Forest" appeared!
Stefano says that when it comes to creating a city, you should always remember the whole complex of problems. First, poverty - more than 30% of the population lives in slums - is migration, which changes the DNA of our cities, and climate change. When a team is working on an existing city, it's like acupuncture. With the creation of a new city, things are completely different.
For example, in China, 20 million people a year move to cities from the countryside. This scale of urbanization can only be managed by creating new cities, and the Chinese cannot constantly expand their existing ones. And now we are working on a completely new green city project in China, in Liuzhou County. It is not a very large city, with a population of only 1,400,000 people. They wanted to create a new environment and called us. By 2020, we plan to complete the construction.
Stefano Bouary loves many cities. First of all, of course, his native Milan. And the rest of the cities he evaluates through the prism of his native city, and he likes it very much. The most unpredictable city in the world is Rio de Janeiro. Its landscape is changing as you move around the city. From the favelas to the luxurious areas, from the mountains to the ocean, life boils everywhere. Berlin is the best city in terms of quality of life. Everything is even too good there. You come there and just don't worry about anything. The strongest city historically is Rome. In terms of population density, New York City is a positive place to live. The atmosphere of happiness and pleasure of driving is Los Angeles. And Moscow is a force of the city structure: history and geography interact with each other very much here. It is a city of sightseeing.