Master plan for Milan
For years, the German landscape architect Andreas Kipar has been involved in Milan’s transition from a grey metropolis to a laboratory for green quality of life.
Bosco Verticale his the name of the artwork which has many visitors to Milan craning their necks: it comprises two residential tower blocks, around 80 and 110 metres high, planted with 900 trees. Stefano Boeri’s vertical forest is part of the large-scale Porta Nuova project. For Expo 2015, an entire new city district was built on former wasteland over the course of many years. A German played a major part in ensuring that the new quarter would boast plenty of green spaces: the landscape architect Andreas Kipar developed the Porta Nuova master plan linking the numerous individual projects. The goal was to create a new urban area that would slow down the hectic pace of big city life and could be experienced on foot or bicycle by local residents and tourists alike.
Andreas Kipar has already run a planning office in Milan since 1985, and has long made this North Italian city his home. He has been closely involved in its transition away from a grey and noisy metropolis – German newspaper Die Welt calls him “Milan’s green thumb”. Born in the Ruhr region’s Gelsenkirchen in 1960, Kipar is very much au fait with processes of urban transformation. He feels comfortable in Milan – a city not only of fashion but also of work – especially now that it offers so much green quality of life.
