Shabiha Nur Khatoon
Its immense contribution to urban ecology apart, the vertical forest symbolises a unique symbiosis of nature and architecture – a global green drive that has the potential to combat the increasing menace of air pollution in some of the leading cosmopolitan centres of the world…
A recent survey has revealed that air pollution in India is “deadlier” than even that of China’s, although Beijing is often cited as an example of alarming pollution. The national capital too is infamous for the smog that envelopes it in winter. At a time when the menace of pollution has assumed serious proportions around the world, countries are trying to come up with solutions to combat the threat.
China is trying to take the ‘Green Environment, Clean Environment’ thought to a different level altogether with the construction of ‘vertical forest’, and is only the third country after Italy and Switzerland, and the first in Asia, to have this design implemented.
The idea behind the Nanjing Vertical Forest, which will bring thousands of trees and shrubs into the highly populated Pukou district of the city absorbing tons of CO2 and producing a wealth of oxygen, is scheduled to be built by 2018.
Vertical forest is the brainchild of architect Stefano Boeri, and it’s not for the first time that he is coming up with a green initiative. In fact he has designed similar buildings earlier in Milan and Lausanne.
The design, when it was proposed earlier, was considered to be something that just looked good on paper. However, with the groundbreaking success of Bosco Verticale in Italy, green towers were later constructed in Switzerland.
Boeri has designed the structure in Milan which has a pair of towers that resemble the planned Nanjing structure. In Milan, the construction started in 2009 and was over by 2014. The buildings are now residential structures. However, in Nanjing the project assumed a greater scale: the number of plants brought was far higher than in Milan and the total height of the towers was greater.
The two towers, called the Nanjing Green Towers, are being constructed next to each other with 1,100 trees and 2,500 cascading plants and shrubs. The trees, plants and shrubs will cover 65,000 square feet of the buildings’ area.
The Green Towers are expected to absorb 25 tons of carbon dioxide every year and produce approximately 60 kg of oxygen every day!
The towers, one 200 metres high and the other 108 metres tall, are expected to be built by 2018. The taller tower, with 35 floors, will host offices, a museum and school of green architecture. The smaller of the two towers will be the Hyatt hotel, with 247 rooms. There will also be a club on the former’s rooftop and a swimming pool on the latter’s.
Creating vertical forests is a brilliant environmental move to improve greenery and purify air, and at the same time improve the quality of life.
Before going into the details of the Nanjing vertical forest and other countries who have taken part in this green initiative, it is first vital to know what a vertical forest is, and also what its benefits are in terms of combating pollution.
‘Bosco Verticale’ (vertical forest) is a model for a sustainable residential building, a project for metropolitan reforestation contributing to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding the city upon the territory.
The project was designed as part of the rehabilitation of the historic district of Milan between Via De Castillia and Confalonieri. It consists of two residential towers of which the largest has 26 floors and is 110 metres high (called Torre E), while the smaller tower has 18 floors and is 76 metres high. Called Torre D, the latter contains 400 condominium units priced from 3,000–12,000 Euros per square metre.
The structure is called Bosco Verticale because each tower houses trees between three and six metres which help mitigate smog and produce oxygen. It is also used to moderate temperatures inside the building in winter and summer. The design was tested in a wind tunnel to ensure the trees would not topple from gusts of wind.
The first example of the vertical forest consisting of two residential towers was realised in the centre of Milan, on the edge of the Isola neighbourhood, hosting 900 trees and over 20,000 plants from a wide range of shrubs and floral plants distributed according to the sun exposure of the facade.
