Creating Life in Concrete: The Forests of the Future

If you stop for a moment and look around, you’ll notice something troubling. As each year passes, more and more Earth is consumed by humanity. Forests fall to make way for cars and roads, homes and businesses, skyscrapers and cities. But some people are trying to reverse this trend. Case in point: In Milan, Italy, there is a pair of residential towers that are currently being built, and soon they will host more than 900 trees on 8,900 square meters of terraces.

This is just one attempt to bring a little bit of nature back into our lifeless cities. Ultimately, this effort will not only beautify our most populated spaces, it will help all of the insects and other creatures that have been forced to conform to our encroaching concrete.

Of course, a lot of time and effort went into planning this. We had to be sure that the trees would be able to survive, that they would have the soil and nutrients that they need to stay healthy.  The design was also tested in a wind tunnel in order to ensure the trees would not fall over (or fall off!) as a result of high winds. Learn more at the video below.