Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) | Milan

Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest, is one of Milan’s most remarkable architectural achievements-a pair of residential towers that merge urban living with nature in a way that redefines what a modern city can look like. Rising in the Porta Nuova District, the two towers have become a global icon of sustainable design, celebrated for their green façades that transform the skyline into a living, breathing forest.

Conception and Design

The Bosco Verticale was designed by Italian architect Stefano Boeri, together with Gianandrea Barreca and Giovanni La Varra, and completed in 2014. The project emerged from a simple but revolutionary question: how can vertical architecture contribute to environmental restoration within dense urban centers?

Boeri’s answer was to create not just buildings, but living ecosystems. The two towers-Tower A (110 meters) and Tower B (76 meters)-house around 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 15,000 perennials and ground-covering plants, spread across terraces of varying depths. The greenery corresponds to roughly 20,000 square meters of forest vertically distributed along the façades.

Architecture and Ecological Innovation

Every detail of the Bosco Verticale is designed to support life-both human and plant. Each balcony projects outward at a slightly different angle, allowing maximum sunlight and air circulation for the vegetation. The irrigation system is self-sustaining, collecting and recycling greywater filtered from the buildings themselves.

The plants serve a vital ecological role:

They absorb CO₂ and produce oxygen, improving air quality.

They act as natural insulation, reducing energy needs for heating and cooling.

They filter dust and pollutants from the city air.

They provide habitats for birds and insects, creating a miniature ecosystem high above the streets.

Structural engineers from Arup collaborated to ensure that the towers could handle the additional weight of thousands of plants, including mature trees up to nine meters tall. Each plant species was selected by botanists for its ability to thrive in Milan’s climate, considering wind resistance, root behavior, and seasonal change.

A Living Façade

Viewed from afar, the towers appear like lush, irregular sculptures, their terraces bursting with foliage that changes color with the seasons-green in summer, gold in autumn, and bare but sculptural in winter. Up close, the contrast between glass, steel, and leaf textures creates a living mosaic of light and shadow. Residents look out onto private gardens that hang hundreds of feet above the ground, offering a rare tranquility in the heart of Milan.

Inside, the apartments are minimalist and filled with natural light. Each unit opens onto terraces large enough to accommodate trees and flowering shrubs, giving the sense of living inside a suspended park.

Awards and Recognition

Bosco Verticale quickly became an international model for sustainable architecture. It won the 2014 International Highrise Award and was named “Best Tall Building Worldwide” by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) in 2015. It inspired similar projects in cities such as Nanjing, Utrecht, and Toronto, where Boeri’s studio continues to design “vertical forests” tailored to different environments.

The Urban Context

Situated in the Porta Nuova – Isola area, Bosco Verticale overlooks the Biblioteca degli Alberi, a public park that extends its ecological vision horizontally. The area has evolved into one of Milan’s most dynamic neighborhoods, where modern architecture, sustainability, and art coexist. Nearby cafés, cycle paths, and pedestrian boulevards keep the district alive with local activity.

At dusk, when the sunlight hits the greenery and glass at sharp angles, the towers glow in warm hues, and their reflections ripple through the surrounding skyscrapers-creating a powerful image of a city that breathes.

Symbolism and Legacy

Bosco Verticale stands not only as a building but as a philosophy of coexistence between humanity and nature. It represents Milan’s broader transformation from industrial gray to sustainable green, a shift from expansion to regeneration.

Today, it remains one of the most photographed sites in Milan-not for its height or luxury, but for its idea: that architecture can heal, not just house, urban life.