Arguably, this city plan doesn’t mention much about wood in architecture.
However, the Liuzhou Forest City commissioned by Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning is envisioned to be a new green city that fights air pollution. It is now under construction and will be completed by 2020.
The Master Plan by Stefano Boeri Architetti sees a city where offices, houses, hotels, hospitals and schools are entirely covered by plants and trees. It is located mountainous area of Guangxi in southern China, an area that covers 175 hectares along the Liujiang river.
Once completed, the new city will be home to 30,000 people, absorb almost 10,000 tonnes of CO2 and 57 tonnes of pollutants per year and produce approximately 900 tonnes of oxygen. It will also have 40,000 trees and almost one million plants of over 100 species.
The new green city, entirely wired, will be connected to Liuzhou through a fast rail line used by electric cars and will host various residential areas, commercial and recreational spaces, two schools and a hospital.
Liuzhou Forest City will have all the characteristics of an energy self- sufficient urban establishment: geothermal energy for interior air- conditioning and solar panels over the roofs for collecting renewable energy.
Right after the success of Vertical Forest in Milan Stefano Boeri Architetti has continued on its research for a new generati
on of architecture and urban environment threatened by climate change. The Milan model will also be replicated in many other parts of the world and in China in Nanjing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
For the first time in China and in the world, an innovative urban settlement will combine the challenge for energy self-sufficiency and for the use of renewable energy with the challenge to increase biodiversity and to effectively reduce air pollution in urban areas thanks to the multiplication of vegetable and biological urban surfaces.
The diffusion of plants, not only in the parks and gardens or along the streets, but also over building facades, will allow the energy self-sufficient city to improve the air quality (absorbing both CO2 and fine dust of 57 tonnes per year), to decrease the average air temperature, to create noise barriers and to improve the biodiversity of living species, generating the habitat for birds, insects and small animals that inhabit the Liuzhou territory.
Rendering by Stefano Boeri Architetti
