Stefano Boeri: Nature’s Favorite Architect

TRANSCRIPT

Stefano Boeri: On the other side, I think that city will remain the protagonist. Nations were weaker in conditioning all the force to develop and transition to ecological transition, and cities were becoming protagonists. Recognizing cities as a protagonist, more than nations, more than state, national state. I think this is why the role of majors, for instance is so important and the role of municipality is so important.

Dan Rubinstein: Hi, I’m Dan Rubinstein and this is The Grand Tourist. I’ve been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour to the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food, and travel, all the elements of a well-lived life.

In a town like New York, cutting-edge architecture usually means ultra-luxurious towers packed with amenities and over-the-top everything. Anything else tends not to innovate too much, and it’s easy to feel disappointed in the power of architecture to change our lives and our environment. That’s why it’s so inspiring today to meet our guest, Stefano Boeri.

He’s one of Italy’s leading thinkers in architecture and design. He’s an urban planner and the president of the legendary design museum called the Triennale, as well as the brains behind some truly incredible projects that make you think. He’s a native of Milan and knows its urban fabric better than most.

In classic Italian fashion, he takes after his mother, who is also a famed and rare female talent, designer Cini Boeri. He was once the editor of the pivotal Italian design magazine, Domus and is the type to create a manifesto that really adds something to the discipline and trajectory of design. More on that later.

This year, he’s celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Bosco Verticale or vertical forest, a pair of towers in Milan covered in plants and trees. It’s an idea that was radical in its time and still is today. But this isn’t just a matter of putting some potted plants on a few balconies either, but using the residential towers as a thriving ecosystem all its own. The incredible project, which has been widely influential and he’s repeated similar designs around the globe is also the subject of a new book out next month from Rizzoli.

I caught up with Stefano from his studio in, where else? Milan, to discuss growing up in the shadow of his famous mother. How developers first told him that the Bosco Verticale would be impossible to pull off, the origins and meaning of his urban forestry manifesto, his upcoming and highly spiritual mega project in Nepal, and much more.

You were born and raised in Milan, and of course your work has left such an amazing mark in the city from an urban point of view. I’m wondering, what are your earliest memories of Milan as a city, as a child?

I was born in Milano and I spent the first two decades of my life in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio. Piazza Sant’Ambrogio is in the center of Milano and it’s an amazing square with a presence of a Roman church. I cannot forget, let’s say, the feeling of the presence of this unbelievable quadriportico, who is the space just behind the church, which at the same time, the soccer and let’s say profane space is a place where I used to play football with my friends. And at the same time, it was a very, let’s say nobile and soccer environment.

But basically Milano, it’s always part of my feelings and of also, my perception of any urban environment that I have met in my life. So it’s like a kind of precondition. It’s like a filter. We could say that I use Milano as a filter and I’m used to compare with the Milano environment, the Milano landscape, the proportion between empty and built space, any other urban environment that I’ve met in my life.

So I think that for an architect, it’s very important to have this kind of interior, intimate city, but normally correspond to the city where you had born, not necessarily. In my case, it’s absolutely, let’s say there is a very strong superimposition. So Milano is exactly … Well, I recognize a kind of matrix of Milano as a filter with all what I’ve seen and all what I’ve experienced. And basically, also kind of a fertile device in my activity as an architect, as a designer.

And a lot of my guests, they might have a parent, one or two parents that were in the art or design world, or a creative, but your mother, Cini Boeri was a very prominent figure. And I was wondering if you can explain to the audience, especially an American audience, who your mother was, in brief of course, and what her contribution to design was. And just explain that part of it.

Yeah, yeah. No, my mother was a designer and an architect. She also was born in Milano. She graduated at Politecnico, like me. And I think she was a very … You can imagine after the Second World War, we had only few women that were, let’s say part of the architectural elite in Italy.

Gae Aulenti, Anna Ferrieri, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, and Cini Boeri, and Franca Helg who was the wife of Franco Albini, but all they were extremely brave. So they were capable to enter in this very, let’s say masculine field.

And what Cini was always trying to develop in her approach to design, it’s the concept of autonomy. She was designing a private house, she was designing buildings, she was designing furniture, always with this idea of autonomy, and always trying to connect the result of her professional activity with, let’s say the obsession that were part of her very private and intimate life.

So she has an idea of the concept of family, was very important, very strong and was based on the concept that every member of the family should require and ask a very important autonomy relation with the other. And only if this happens, you can cohabit. So it’s this kind of balance between cohabitation, and let’s say dependency that was very strong in all what she has done in her life.

And this was present basically, also in her architectures. If I go back to what she did in Sardinia, the three villas she did in Sardinia, the three houses she did in Sardinia, that were based on this concept. But also in her work as a designer, that was always very important.

And you studied at Milan’s Politecnico, where I think you just mentioned that your mother also attended. Was that your choice, to become a designer or was that something you felt maybe the pressure of the family to study?

No, when I was a teen and when I finished my, let’s say high school, I didn’t want to do architecture at all. I started to, let’s say, explore all the possible alternatives and I was extremely attracted by oceanography and by marine biology, but it was complicated because of the place where it was better. The best place to study oceanography was Nice in French, and I didn’t want to go there.

So finally I decided not to do oceanography, and then I start and again, again, again, and understood that my interest for architecture was extremely strong. Although my mother, she absolutely was not pushing, but she was there always. She was always there. And probably the reason I started to study architecture from the scale of urbanism.

So I graduated in study master plans basically, and I started to … Well, I immediately went in the opposite direction, in the field of architecture. My mother was more oriented to furniture, to interiors. I was more oriented to, let’s say an approach was at the scale of the urban environment. So, acting as a master plan designer for instance.

And I don’t know much about your early career in the ’80s. So maybe you can explain, what were your aspirations when you graduated? What were those first years like? I think you were teaching also, and you were studying in Venice.

I had a PhD in Venice, and my maestro, my teacher was Bernardo Secchi who was a very important scholar and teacher. And he was one of the thinker that in the ’80s started to describe the sprawl as a phenomenon happening not only in Europe. And he was very smart in his description. And I was also, let’s say immediately involved within this attempt to describe what was happening around us because basically, what we were studying at university was, let’s say the history of architecture and the past.

So there is this kind of obsession to study the classic architecture as a matrix of everything and there were no attention to contemporary environment. So what Bernardo Secchi did and what I started to do in the ’80s, writing a book on Milano and then writing a book together with a photographer Gabriele Basilico in the ’90s.

We were developing a kind of, let’s say, exploration of the not so peripheral, but of suburban environments around Milan, around Rome, around Naples. And we were studying this kind of, let’s say very, very particular environment, which is not a city, but it’s not a countryside, where you can find this multitude of small buildings everywhere without quality. And we were studying exactly that phenomenon, and that was very important for me.

And I remember where we were part of them, of the Venice Biennale in 1996 with Gabriele Basilico. And this book and the exhibition we’d done was called Italy: Cross Sections of a Country. It was also published in English and was important. For a certain period, I also was very attracted by description of, let’s say, by a kind of geography of the urban environment, and I was a founder of a group of researcher called Multiplicity.

That was my next question, which was tell me about Multiplicity and what that research group was.

Yeah. My feeling was that, let’s say the traditional way to observe and describe the urban environments, so this kind of zenithal point of view was less and less useful, and we need to put together other perspective, other angles, view, observation. And that’s why with Multiplicity, I start to develop this concept of eclectic atlases.

So, to describe the relation between the things, the word, and the concept, not using only a kind of, let’s say zenithal point of view, but trying to introduce in a description, other possible perspective, dynamic perspective, or let’s say perspective where we are putting together the point of view of different subjects.

So I was very interested in creating a group, a research group, Multiplicity, who was not only composed by architect, but also by photographer, by psychologist, by geographers. And we started to work in the ’90s, ’92, ’93 in Milano. Then it was quite interesting because quite immediately, we were more successful in the contemporary art field than in the architectures.

How so?

That’s what was so strange. We were part of Documenta in Kassel, 2002. We were asked to develop our, let’s say installation and our research in London, in New York, in Paris, but always in a contemporary art contest. I don’t know why, but it was quite interesting. It was also very important for us because that was a way to learn how to express not only the result of our research, but also the methodology.

So we were quite, I think it’s, we were capable to use our context as a way to, let’s say, it’s a kind to offer the possibility of falsification because every visitor could have the possibility to see what we have done, to decide if they like it or not, but also to discuss the methodology we were using as a researcher. And so for that, Multiplicity was very important for me.

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And you started your firm, Boeri Studio in 1999. And what was the first project that your studio completed, that you felt maybe in your mind you go, “Ah, okay. This is here, who we are. This represents who I am and my aspirations as a firm”? What was another way of saying, your first big success?

Yeah, and no doubt on that, it was a geothermal plant for Enel, who was the most important energy company in Italy. And this was built, if I’m not wrong, in 1994, 1995 and was quite interesting because the request was to mimetize, let’s say, really badly conditioning the landscape in Tuscany, in Monte Amiata nearby Grosseto.

And what we did, and what I did was, in a way the opposite. So we wanted to, let’s say emphasize, to make this mechanical presence. Didn’t want to hide it, but to maybe make them more and more visible, adding a different configuration. So we were reinterpreting the space, the industrial mechanism in a new way.

And I remember well that, that project was appreciated by Álvaro Siza and Tadao Ando and was awarded, and we were part of an exhibition in Tokyo, in Japan where at a certain moment there was this award for young architects, for European young architects. And so that was probably the first step in my career.

And just to get this right, that was before you started the studio in 1999, or after?

No, because honestly, I started the studio by myself, also. I started to have a studio because basically where I am now is where I was, so in the same space, in the same city, in the same road. And my private apartment is, let’s say in the same floor of my studio since, basically 1984, 1985.

So I was started to work as an architect immediately after the university. So basically in 1981, ’82, ’83, and I started to do competition. And the project for Bagnore Enel, for the geothermal plant, if I’m not wrong, was in 1992, 1993.

Then in 1999, I was founding the Boeri Studio with two young students I had from Genoa and Milano, and that was another step, if you want. Yeah, because I started to teach in Genoa, in 1992. From ’92 to 2002, I was teaching in Genoa.

And now you’ve done many projects, but of course today, I’d love to talk to you about the Bosco Verticale. And I think the concept for the idea had started when you were the director of Domus magazine, one of the important design magazines in Italy and the world, especially at the time.

Tell me about that idea and how the idea started before the building, just as a concept on paper essentially.

Well, yes. No, no, I think you’re right. What was something was very present in my life, so the idea to try to combine living nature with architecture. And I started to work around this obsession, probably, yes, you’re right, when I started to run the Domus magazine.

Well, same time, I think it was quite difficult to find an opportunity to transform this obsession in a real opportunity, to do something of real. And this happened only in 2007 when I met Mr. Hines and his Italian CEO, and they asked me to imagine how to realize two high-rise building in the center of Milano, in Porta Nuova, in an area who was bombed during the Second World War. And it remained as a kind of black hole for 50 years.

And I remember well that I was teaching at Harvard GSD in 2007, 2008. And with my student, we were studying Dubai, the explosion of this city in a desert environment with hundreds of high-rise building covered by glass. And well, I remember very well that I was in Dubai in that very moment when I started to think how to answer to the request of Mr. Heinz and Mr. Cartella.

And I started to imagine, “Well, why don’t we try to convince them? That could be so interesting, to develop a high-rise building, which act as a kind of ecosystems, where instead of having a mineral facade with glass of steel or concrete, we could have a kind of double facade, a biological facade with plants and trees.” And that’s happened when I was exactly in Dubai, where this hundred of glass facade were growing.

And yes, I think there was a relation between these two text, but … And then they, at the beginning were very skeptical and they told me, “Well, dear Boeri, I think you’re crazy.” But for different reason, they were, in a certain way indebted me because they knew that I could be extremely helpful from, let’s say an intellectual, political point. For other reason, I could help them to go ahead in their project of developing this new settlement.

So they told me, “Well, for us, what you are proposing is impossible, but if you want, we can give you three months. You have the time to come back with answers to this list of very strong request and the question, how can a tree live at 100 meter? How can you imagine to irrigate 10, 20, 30,000 plants considering the different humidity condition? How can you imagine to manage and to develop the maintenance of these trees? How much will be the cost of the maintenance? How can you avoid that with extreme windy condition, a tree at 100, 120 meters break and create problems for the tenants and for inhabitants of the district?”

So what I did was, I was simply gathering a bunch of friends, engineers, ethologists, zoologists, and we spent, let’s say three months studying and then we came back with the answer. And honestly, they were very coherent, the two men were very coherent with their expectation. They told me, “Yes. Okay, we can start,” and we started.

So we started in 2007, to transform this kind abstract concept in something real. Then we started the construction in 2009, but 2009, as you know well was a very delicate period, let’s say, not only for the real estate sphere, but more in general for the economy of Europe and worldwide economy.

So the construction company who started to build the Bosco Verticale was collapsing in 2012. So for two years, for one year and a half we were, let’s say, “Well, what’s happening?” because everything was stopped. Then we found another construction company who decided to go ahead and we were inaugurating, opening the building in October 2014. So, exactly 10 years ago. We were lucky, very lucky.

And one of the elements of Bosco Verticale that, I think gets overlooked, I think just to the average person is that it’s not necessarily just about putting trees on a building, but that it’s also sort of a habitat that impacts not just the building, but also for animals.

And I was wondering, tell me about that sort of ecosystem that it creates, not just larger potted plants on a terrace, if you know what I mean.

No, true. I think we have a very small apartment. We have rented a small apartment in the vertical forest and we go there quite frequently to, let’s say, test the cohabitation between humans, birds, insects, and plants. And it’s extremely interesting to observe this cohabitation. Until now, honestly, we didn’t have serious troubles on observing this cohabitation.

But I think what makes this building, I think, a prototype of a possible generation of new buildings is that it’s possible to imagine, let’s say a cohabitation inside one unique building, of different living species, or living being. And it’s possible, also to see how these buildings that are, let’s say as we have written, building for birds and plants and not only for humans, let’s say, can be replicate or interpreted in different countries, in different environment.

I’m very happy. I think that after 10 years, this prototype, this experiment is answering quite well to the request we had, and we have learned a lot from it. So we have learned also, in term of … We’re now, I think, in condition to correct some mistakes, to improve some of the character of the building itself. It’s very important.

Basically, I think the most significant result of what we have done is that this building is always changing. That’s so strong. And that’s something that-

How is it changing?

… I didn’t expect. Changing because the fact that it is covered by plants makes this building a mutant. So every season, every year, sometimes also in one day, you can see in term of how they react to the sunlight, the change. So it’s kind of a ever-changing building. It’s very, very, very unexpected and important for me, this quality, which is quite unique.

And what did you learn? If you could do this Bosco Verticale again from scratch, how would you do anything differently?

Well, I think immediately after 2014, the opening of the Bosco Verticale, we had been asked not to replicate, but to design other, let’s say green high-rise buildings in other parts of the world. And every time we had to start, not with our, let’s say, stylistic obsession, but we start considering the climate condition of every space, of every place.

And then after observing the climate condition, we start to select the plants, the species that are more adaptable to this specific climate condition. And only at that moment, we start to act as designer, because the life trajectory of every species is, let’s say for us, extremely important when we design the facade, when we design the relation between the balcony and the loggia or between two balconies.

So we have to give to every tree, to every shrubs, to every bush, to every plants, the space for its growth. And this is a completely different way to design a building. So if you want, we are considering trees as tenants. We are really considering their requests, their expectations, their trajectory growth, and that.

So we have, in a way, introduced botany in our knowledge, and this is still extremely intriguing and interesting. And this explains also, why all the vertical forests that we have designed in Holland, in China, in Egypt are different because every time we start again, if you want.

And 10 years later, how is the building holding up? What is the feedback like from the people that live there, now that they’ve been there for 10 years?

No. Well, in Milano, I think it’s a fantastic, the reaction of people. So we honestly didn’t have any kind of trouble, problems. If I go and I see what’s happening in Eindhoven, for instance, where we had built three years ago, a social housing vertical forest, which is completely inhabited by student and young researcher, is all for rent, is very, let’s say, very cheap, if you want in term of construction cost, building, but extremely successful.

And also in that case, I’m very happy what’s happening there. So they’re the same in China, in Huanggang, where we have built these two towers, which are also in a way social housing from a certain point of view. So I think I have the dream to create a kind of an association of tenants, of the buildings that have this kind of philosophy. I probably will do it in the future.

Good. And tell me a little bit about, to people that don’t know, tell me about your sort of manifesto.

Manifesto?

The urban forestry, sort of manifesto and what urban forestry means to you.

No. We started to think how to scale the concept of ecosystem to the entire urban environment, and that’s why we were launching this manifesto in 2015. And I think we used it also to promote the first international forum on urban forestry together with FAO, Food Agriculture Organization of United Nations and this was sold in Mantua.

And the second one was last year in Washington. The next will be in China in two years. And well, this is simply because we believe that to build green buildings is not enough if we want to slow down the global warming effect. So if we want really, to tackle and to try to reduce the disadvantages of climate change, we have to, let’s say, extend this kind of green obsession to different and stronger and wider actions, like introduce forest in an urban environment and then connect all the green environments creating biological corridors.

So that’s why we were working on that everywhere we are asked to intervene as architects or event planners. So I think this is a very important issue for different reason, but the main reason is that city are producing the 70% of CO2 which is present in the atmosphere. And the cheaper, the more pragmatic and the more inclusive way to try to, let’s say, to slow down or to counterpoint the production of CO2 is to enlarge the biological and greenest environment inside our cities.

It’s like to fight the enemy in its field, no? So that’s for us, extremely important because trees are absorbing CO2, trees are the absorbing the fine dust of pollution, trees are reducing the consumption of energy because they’re also shading the facade. So, reducing the needs of conditioning the air in summer time, for instance. But trees are also shading. And I think that’s why we are also working a lot with urban forestry everywhere.

We just finished to propose a project for making a part of Riyadh greener as a way to shade all the public spaces and to reduce the consumption of energy. I think that shade will become one of the main issue of the future. We need more and more and more shade everywhere in our cities, which are mineral environments. And we have to go back to the idea that basically, the cities should be ecosystems and not only mineral environments. And we need plants to do that because plants are at the base of any possible biological evolution.

And obviously, at the time that I’m speaking to you, we’re dealing with an election and a lot of political changes, both in the United States and in Europe. And I’m wondering, with so much emphasis being placed on the urban center as this sort of hope for the future, what can the design world do about the political implications of that?

Meaning, are we overlooking the rural areas, or small towns, or the other parts of the world, the other 30, 40, 50% of where people live? Are we putting too much emphasis on the city intellectually, that we’re not coming up with something that could be enacted upon as much as it should be, if that makes sense?

I’m sure you know Richard Weller is a teacher at Penn University and he is a friend, and some years ago came out with this idea of a World Park. And what Richard was saying is that we need to connect all the biodiversity hubs present in the planet. And thanks to this possible network of biological corridors, we could multiplicate the advantages produced by these biodiversity hubs.

And he was designing three main, let’s say green and biological pathways connecting different part of the planet, of the continent, the planet. And at the different scale, we are working in Italy and in South Europe with the same idea, and we are developing this idea of Parco Italia, which is exactly where we are putting connections, not only the natural reserves, but all, let’s say the place where you have a hotpot of biodiversity.

And this is very important because there’s also a way to try to intervene on the hundreds of small historical villages of hamlets that we have in Central Italy, we have in Germany, we have in French that are in larger part, abandoned or semi-abandoned.

So I think that what we are saying about the necessity to not simply, let’s say reduce our observation to city is absolutely crucial. We have to enlarge the scale of thing. On the other side, I think that city will remain the protagonist of all what will happen in the future.

And you start your answer talking about politics, about what happen in United States. Well, if you go back to the period of Trump, the last period of Trump, there was probably a moment where nations were weaker in conditioning all the force to develop and transition to ecological transition, and cities were becoming protagonists of this campaign.

If I go back to, there were several cities associations that were promoting ecological transition, and that became stronger and stronger in that period. So I think what will happen in the next month will be the same. So I think we have to go back to recognizing cities as a protagonist, more than nations, more than state, national state in this campaign.

Well, I think this is why the role of majors, for instance, is so important and the role of municipality is so important.

And of course, I can’t overlook your role at the Triennale. To someone, maybe coming to visit, maybe you … Let’s say someone came to visit Milan for the first time and they said, “What is the Triennale,” how do you describe it?

That’s a good question. Triennale, because this name is quite ambiguous, no? It means three years. But the reason is that Triennale was born 100 year ago and the building who is hosting the activity of the Triennale Institution was built 90 years ago.

And since 1928, Triennale is part of the BIE, Bureau International des Expositions, which is a place in Paris where all the expos are, let’s say, promoted. All the international expos that you can see. It was in Dubai last year. Before Dubai, was Milano, then was Shanghai and so on.

So since 1928, this building in Milano was hosting every three years, an international expo. But in 1980, the Triennale Foundation, so the association of the institutions that were promoting the Triennale expo decided to change basically, the activity, the life of the institution and the decision was to have a series of permanent activities.

So, not only every three years, but the name Triennale remained, was still present as a legacy of this past and is still there. But now, Triennale, nowadays, Triennale is a public institution within a public building. And what makes this place so unique in Milano is that we have a theater, we have a dance room, we have several exhibition spaces, we have several restaurants. It’s a place to go and to stay, not simply to be part, or to visit an exhibition.

Well, I think it’s an amazing place. It’s a little bit like Barbican in London. So, we deal with cinema, theater, design, architecture, visual art, graphic, fashion, all together there. So it’s a place where all the art languages were used to hybridize themselves, to not respect borders between discipline and art.

And what has your sort of mandate been as director? What are the big projects, the big piece, the big things you’re moving, not talking about individual exhibitions? What is your big mandate?

Yeah, I will say two things. One was, let’s say, to work on a bunch of protagonists of the recent history of Italian design and architecture, and to approach each one of them from an anthropological point of view, not simply from, let’s say a technical or simply architectural point of view. So we were reconstructing the life and the amazing human relation they had in their life. That’s one.

And the other interest, or that was a part of my mandate probably will be visible in few months because we are going to open on May, the 24 expo, international expo and who will have a title, Inequalities, How to Mend the Fracture of Humanity. And that it will be all on describing inequalities in different fields. Showing how inequalities have grown, are growing everywhere, basically in our cities, but also observing how we cannot simply applicate a kind of binary approach to inequalities, because inequalities are a part, sometimes of different aspects of our life and they are related with life expectations, they are related with gender, they are related with, for sure, difference in term of production of CO2 and capacity, let’s say, to implement effort to reduce the impact of global warming.

So there are different layers that we’ll try to put together in this six months of art exhibition that we open on May 22 in Milano.

And do you think that that filter has changed over the years? Has that matrix changed to today?

Not so much, not so much, or if you want, what has changed is that I have changed the period of the Milano history that became more and more important in certain moment of my life, of my activity as a designer.

For instance, for sure, I remember very well that when I was 30, my attention were extremely focusing on all what’s happening in Milano just after the Second World War. So the period, the ’50s and the ’60s where there’s, let’s say explosion of amazing architectures.

And well, in that moment, I started to run Domus magazine and then Abitare magazine. So the idea to recognize in the two, let’s say more significant masterpieces of Milanese architecture of the 1560s, so the Pirellone Skyscraper by Gio Ponti and the Velasca Tower by BBPR.

So these were the two metrics of my, let’s say, feelings of how Milano was and how Milano should become. And for me, it was very important because also, these two figures, so Gio Ponti on one side was the inventor of Domus. So, he was the founder of the Domus magazine. On the other side, Ernesto Nathan Rogers who was one of the BBPR team, architectural team was the founder of Casabella, who are the two … So, what I think about Milano, Milano is a kind of binary city, so with also two poles. It’s a binary.

So we have Velasca and Pirellone, we have Domus and Casabella, we have Milan and Inter, we have Motta and Alemagna. So it’s always like a kind, two polarities.

Different soccer teams?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, like we have the Mets and the Yankees here in terms of baseball in New York.

Yes, I know. I know.

If you had to describe your career in three words, what three words would you choose your career?

Uncertain, discontinuous, and amazing.

Thank you to my guest, Stefano Boeri, as well as to Walker Drummond and everyone at Rizzoli for making this episode happen. The editor of The Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don’t forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, The Grand Tourist Curator at thegrandtourist.net. And follow me on Instagram @danrubinstein. And don’t forget to follow The Grand Tourist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and leave us a rating or a comment. Every little bit helps. Til next time!

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