Watch our live talk with Stefano Boeri about his new book Green Obsession

Dezeen teamed up with Italian architecture studio Stefano Boeri Architetti to host a live talk marking the launch of Stefano Boeri's book exploring the relationship between nature and architecture.

Titled Green Obsession: Trees Towards Cities, Humans Towards Forests, the book explores the work that Boeri's eponymous architecture practice has been doing for the past 15 years to redefine the relationship between the city and nature.

Moderated by Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, the talk explored some of the book's central themes, including the role and importance of integrating nature with architecture and urban planning.

The book highlights the importance of architecture and urban planning co-existing with nature instead of replacing it

The book, published by Actar Publishers and supported by Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, aims to give voice to an ecological transition within architecture, in which cities are designed to support not only human life but all living species.

"We have an obsession: that of creating buildings for trees, which can also be inhabited by humans and even birds," Boeri said.

"We are also obsessed with designing forest cities, where plants and nature have no less of a presence than humans, and where both create a habitat in which mineral surfaces are reduced to the minimum amount needed for life."

Boeri created an urban planning proposal called Smart Forest City in Cancun, Mexico, which is designed to host up to 130,000 inhabitants

Other topics explored in the book include the role that communication, politics and economics play within the climate crisis. It includes contributions from ethologist and conservationist Jane Goodall and American environmentalist Paul Hawken, among other experts.

Boeri is best known for designing plant-covered buildings to combat air pollution and counter the effects of deforestation while fostering the connection between humans and nature in urban landscapes.

Amongst his most notable architectural projects is Bosco Verticale, which translates to vertical forest, a pair of high-density residential towers covered in trees in Milan.

More recently, Stefano Boeri Architetti completed its first vertical forest in China, comprising two 80-metre residential towers covered in over 400 trees and plants.

Stefano Boeri Architetti's most notable project is the Bosco Verticale residential towers in Milan

The book also includes masterplans of Boeri's The Green River design, an urban reforestation project for Milan's unused railways which proposes 45,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide could be absorbed while producing 1,800 tonnes of oxygen.

Partnership content

This talk was produced by Dezeen for Stefano Boeri Architetti as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership contenthere.

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Cave Bureau proposes "Cow Corridors" to allow Maasai people to safely herd cattle through Nairobi

Speaking live from Nairobi at 3pm London time on day four of the Dezeen 15 digital festival, Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Cave Bureau will set out their vision for a new infrastructure for their city that will address colonial and imperial injustices.

Their proposal, which is presented in a video and a written manifesto, involves creating a form of "reverse futurism" that combines ancestral heritage with contemporary architecture.

"We imagine a new kind of infrastructure we call Cow Corridors for the first inhabitants of the city," they write in their manifesto.

"This is a time where the Maasai citizens of Nairobi will no longer be arrested for bringing their cattle to graze in their ancestral lands, a remnant of past colonial laws of the county government."

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Cave Bureau proposes "a new kind of infrastructure for the first inhabitants of the city"

](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/04/cave-bureau-infrastructure-inhabitants-nairobi-city/)

Cave_bureau is a Nairobi-based architecture and research practice. It was founded by architects and "spelunkers" Stella Mutegi and Kabage Karanja in 2014 to lead geological and anthropological investigations into architecture and nature.

It is currently presenting an installation called Obsidian Rain in the dome of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

The Dezeen 15 festival features 15 manifestos presenting ideas that can change the world over the next 15 years. Each contributor will also take part in a live video interview.

See the line-up of contributors here.

The photograph is courtesy of Cave Bureau.

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Architect Winy Maas proposes covering the entire planet with an inhabitable biostructure

Speaking live from Rotterdam on day two of the Dezeen 15 digital festival, Winy Maas of MVRDV will describe his vision for a new layer on the Earth's surface that will allow both humans and nature to thrive. Watch live at 4:30pm London time today.

Maas will explain his concept of The Sponge, which he proposes in a manifesto written for Dezeen's 15th birthday festival.

This would take the waste generated by humans during the Anthropocene era and turn it into an inhabitable biostructure.

"The idea of the Anthropocene has captured people’s imagination in recent years – the idea that humans have created a new layer in the geology of the Earth," Maas wrote in his manifesto.

"What if we started to think of these new geological layers as a design challenge?"

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"What if we create a new layer on the Earth that incorporates growing human habitation and consumption?" asks Winy Maas

](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/the-sponge-winy-maas-manifesto-dezeen-15/)

"Instead of waiting for a result of human habitation, what if we create a new layer on the Earth that incorporates growing human habitation and consumption, while acknowledging humanity’s current dominance, balancing its effects and combining that with natural development?" he added.

Dutch architect Winy Maas is co-founder and director of Rotterdam studio MVRDV and head of The Why Factory, a research laboratory and think tank he co-founded with the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology.

Dezeen 15 is a three-week digital festival celebrating Dezeen's 15th birthday. Each workday, a different architect or designer will present a manifesto setting out an idea that could change the world over the next 15 years.

Click here for details of all 15 contributors.

_The portrait of Maas is byBarbra Verbij. _

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