Going Green: Dutch Vertical Forest Breaks New Ground

As a rule, you do not want birds nesting in your building. But a vertical forest apartment tower in Netherlands is encouraging just that with small circular holes in the facade of the building welcoming the birds of Utrecht. Ten years on from its ground-breaking and celebrated Bosco Verticale, Stefano Boeri Architetti is still learning and fine-tuning its vertical forests. And every iteration is a step forward in biophilic design. The Italian architecture practice now has 13 green buildings to its credit, across China, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Italy and the Netherlands, each designed to suit its particular landscape, be that heavily polluted air, dry arid desert or cooler European climates. Residents have moved into the latest vertical forest—Wonderwoods at Utrecht City in the Netherlands. Vertical live, work, play mini-city The two-tower Wonderwoods development is a mini-city with offices, ateliers, green spaces and a public square. The first tower was designed by MVSA Architects as a mixed-use tower with rental and owner-occupier homes, offices, a roof park and a digital art space. The second tower, a vertical forest, was designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti and comprises a mixture of rental and owner-occupied homes, as well as a restaurant, gym and offices, which Stefano Boeri says has a “profoundly urban character”. “[It’s] a multipurpose and highly biodiverse architecture, open to the daily life of the citizens, plants and birds of Utrecht,” Boeri says. ▲ The tower comprises 50,000 plants, 200 apartments, offices and a public square. Boeri says the project required an innovative approach to painstaking design and planning to ensure compliance with budgets and build programs, utilising prefabricated facades and balconies. “Wonderwoods Vertical Forest’s [innovation] lies in the meticulous planning of its construction phase, prioritising offsite and prefabricated processes while executing multiple construction stages and operations simultaneously,” Boeri says. “This approach has led to remarkable results in terms of construction timelines … cutting costs with sustainable and innovative technological solutions and creating an accessible and inclusive building.” Developer G&amp;S&amp; (a subsidiary of VolkerWessels) wanted Wonderwoods Vertical Forest to be a live, work, play precinct. Promoting urban ecosystems Boeri says the original Milan project was the realisation of a vision of a new way of designing that “integrated living nature as a fundamental element of design”. “With the Eindhoven vertical forest, we made this typology accessible through controlled rents and affordable prices; with Utrecht, thanks to the functional mix developed throughout the building, we have opened up the typology to the city, welcoming tenants, trees and citizens alike,” Boeri says. ▲ Stefano Boeri of Stefano Boeri Architetti, a Milan-based architecture practice. Wonderwoods Vertical Forest comprises 200 apartments, 360 trees and about 50,000 plants in total of 30 different native varieties. “[It’s] equivalent to the vegetation of 1ha of forest,” Boeri says. “Wonderwoods Vertical Forest is a living architecture with facades that change in chromatic composition and canopy size. “The appearance of the facades varies according to the seasons, the incidence of sunlight, and the growth of the plants. “It is a true urban ecosystem, a habitat for biodiversity, especially for the birds that populate the Dutch skies and find shelter in the circular openings specially created in the facades of Wonderwoods Vertical Forest to house their nests.” Further south at Eindhoven the Trudo Vertical Forest was the first social housing vertical forest the design team had developed and Boeri describes it as a “major goal”. “[It] makes the Vertical Forest typology accessible to all economic groups, integrating the benefits of proximity to nature with the typology of social housing, showing that living in contact with trees and greenery—and enjoying their benefits—is not an exclusive prerogative, but can indeed become a viable choice even for citizens from very different economic backgrounds.” Native design crucial But it’s not a matter of copy and paste. Integrating trees and shrubbery into a high-density apartment block requires a deep understanding of the local climate. Boeri says it requires research into the ideal species of plants, growth in height and width, the local humidity, heat and sun exposure, as well as a broader awareness of the local fauna it could attract. ▲ Stefano Boeri Architetti’s Bosco Verticale, a two-tower vertical forest prototype in Milan. It also requires the use of some very technical systems to manage rainwater underneath the building, thermal insulation and the reduction of air pollution. The maintenance of the greenery is managed through a centralised station that, thanks to a system of sensors, makes it possible to control the irrigation system and schedule pruning interventions. Far from resting on their figurative and literal laurels, Stefano Boeri Architetti has been forging ahead with three more landmark projects in neighbouring Belgium. The design practice also recently bagged the MIPIM Award 2025 for the Best Mixed-Use Project for the Wonderwoods Vertical Forest.

Going Green: Dutch Vertical Forest Breaks New Ground

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