Floating trees bring forest to urban apartments, cleaning air and muting noise

Floating trees bring forest to urban apartments, cleaning air and muting noise
The cladding, a million larch shingles, is like bark.
The cladding, a million larch shingles, is like bark.

When developers talk about incorporating green design into their buildings, they rarely mean incorporating a veritable forest right into the structure.

The developers of 25 Verde, a towering apartment structure in Italy, meant exactly that.

The building, which takes up a city block outside downtown Turin by the Po River, incorporates nearly 200 trees into its design – and that's not counting the metal ones.

It has 150 potted trees seamlessly woven throughout its five stories, 50 more trees populating the courtyard, some treelike structures made from metal supports, and other live plants sprinkled throughout the property.

25 Verde is, in a sense, alive.

The goal of the project was to create an urban oasis in every sense: a living forest with enough plant coverage to provide a barrier between the streets and the units. The vegetation hanging on the outside of the building and sprouting up in the courtyard produces oxygen, absorbs carbon dioxide, cuts down air pollution, mutes noise, changes with the natural cycle of seasons, and creates a microclimate inside the building that diminishes temperature fluctuations, according to architect Luciano Pia.

The forest is also reflected in the building materials. The building is covered in 1.1 million larch shingles, and the massive terraces are also made from solid wood. Eighty immense metal trees "grow" from the ground floor up throughout the structure.

Plus, the property includes sections of rammed earth, a green roof and a pond.

"When all the green is fully blooming it gives the feeling of living in a treehouse," Pia wrote. "You can dream of a house or live in a dream!"

Apartments for sale in the building are listed online starting at roughly $700,000, heading north of $2 million for a top-floor pad. For instance, Casa.it is advertising a 1,300-square-foot unit at about $840,000.

Click here or on a photo for a slideshow of 25 Verde, a forest-like apartment complex in Italy.

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