Designed and developed by Boeri Studio (Stefano Boeri, Gianandrea Barreca, Giovanni La Varra), and built and managed by COIMA in the Porta Nuova district of Milan, the Bosco Verticale was inaugurated in the autumn of 2014 and has now reached its tenth year of life. Ten years of awards, recognition, research, and work have made it a symbol of Milan, an icon not only of green architecture but also a pop icon featured in films, TV series, game shows, jewelry, fashion, advertisements, and songs.
“I realized the Bosco Verticale would become important not when it won the award for Best Skyscraper in the World, but when, a few months later, I received from the great Giuseppe Montanari an illustration of Dylan Dog and Groucho staring perplexed at this strange, bizarre, tall house for trees, humans, and birds in the heart of Milan.”
— Stefano Boeri
To mark this anniversary, Stefano Boeri Architetti (Stefano Boeri, Francesca Cesa Bianchi, Marco Giorgio, and Pietro Chiodi), in collaboration with Rizzoli, curated the English-language book “BOSCO VERTICALE Morphology of a Vertical Forest”, which retraces the history of the project—from an impossible challenge to the realization of the Porta Nuova district—analyzing all its defining aspects. The book features contributions by Beatriz Colomina, Emanuele Coccia, Paul Hawken, Vittorio Lingiardi, Manuel Orazi, Matilda van den Bosch, and James Wines, along with an unpublished photographic portfolio by Iwan Baan created specifically for the book, as well as photographs by Paolo Rosselli, Giovanni Nardi, Dimitar Harizanov, Elisa Galluzzo, and Laura Cionci, plus the extraordinary graphic works of comic artist Enrico Pinto.
The book follows a unique narrative path that evokes the growth of a tree, starting from its roots, moving through the trunk, and extending to the branches. The roots represent the intuition behind an innovative idea, generated from creative and artistic inspirations. The trunk represents the genesis of the project, the challenges faced in terms of structure, technology, and the environment, the construction site, and the impact of the Bosco Verticale on the transformation of the area and the urban landscape.
Finally, the branches outline the life of the Bosco Verticale: on one hand, its place within the context of international architecture, marking a shift towards integrating living nature into the urban environment; on the other hand, its autonomous journey as a symbol and catalyst of biodiversity—even in the collective popular imagination.
In the section dedicated to the “trunk”, the book includes an actual herbarium describing the main plant species (geranium, campanula, periwinkle, ornamental apple, etc.) that populate the Bosco Verticale, also graphically illustrating their placement on the different facades of the building.
In the chapter Voices of the Bosco Verticale, comic artist Enrico Pinto tells the story of the building’s vibrant world through his illustrations, representing the voices that surround it—human tenants, plants, animals, and passersby commenting on it.
In the opening pages, dedicated to the Bosco Verticale as a manifesto, Stefano Boeri writes:
“Sometimes I like to think that the Bosco Verticale might be considered, like Italo Calvino’s novel, both a political and fantastic work. Capable of making the impossible plausible.
[…] The politics of the Bosco Verticale is that of a simple and popular message: living nature must return to inhabit spaces conceived for humans. No more, no less. The reasons are countless: environmental, health-related, aesthetic. But what really matters is that the words of this political manifesto are made of earth, concrete, steel, glass, and 21,000 plants, 360 human beings, 20 bird species, and countless insects. They don’t disappear on a screen or fade in the sun; rather, they constantly change because they grow, age, die, and are reborn from their seeds.
[…] Since its creation, the Bosco Verticale has been inhabited by fairy tales and legends in the collective and retrospective imagination. The Bosco Verticale is fantastic for what it offers its inhabitants: the experience of looking at the city from above, filtered through the leaves and branches of trees and shrubs whose roots are one hundred meters high. In recent years, I have received dozens of drawings and messages from children; their wonder, their curiosity—sometimes gentle, sometimes mischievous—are both the greatest gift the Bosco has given us and the reason for its success, at least so far.”
