Join Miami Beach Urban Studios in their Design Gallery for a lecture by Stefano Boeri.

Stefano Boeri was born in 1956 in Milan. In 1980 he graduated in Architecture at Milan Politecnico and in 1989 he received his PhD from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV). A full Professor of Urban Planning at Milan Politecnico, Boeri has been a guest professor at various universities, including Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), the Strelka Institute in Moscow, the Berlage Institute in the Netherlands and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He has been a designer and member of the Scientific Board at Skolkovo Innovation Center, a high tech hub close to Moscow. Today he is director of the Future City Lab (FCL) at Tongji University in Shanghai, a post-doctoral research programme which explores the future perspectives of global metropolises from the biodiversity and urban forestation perspective.

As an architect and urban planner, Stefano Boeri founded Boeri Studio in 1999, together with Gianandrea Barreca and Giovanni La Varra while 2011 saw the establishment of Stefano Boeri Architetti. In 2014, with Yibo Xu, he founded Stefano Boeri Architetti China, based in Shanghai. The work of the Stefano Boeri Architetti studio ranges from the production of urban visions and architecture to interior and product design, with constant focus on the geopolitical and environmental implications of urban phenomena.

In 2016 Stefano Boeri Architetti was appointed to take part in the reconstruction of the centres of Amatrice and Norcia, struck by the earthquake. As part of the Amate Amatrice charity programme, the new Polo del Gusto di Amatrice and the Centro Polivalente e di Protezione Civile di Norcia were set up in record time: these two examples of architecture were designed as earthquake-proof civil protection constructions and sites for the relaunching of economic and recreational activities and the area’s identifying character.

Attention to the relationship between city and nature led to the creation of the Milan Vertical Forest, the first prototype of a residential building featuring over 700 trees and 20,000 plants and a model of urban forestation that considers vegetation as an essential element of architecture. Built in 2014, the Vertical Forest has received numerous international awards such as the International Highrise Award (2014) and the Best Tall Building Worldwide, presented by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (2015). With the introduction of the concept of biodiversity in architecture, Stefano Boeri worked on the development of the Milan prototype until he presented the Città Foresta project at the COP21 International Climate Conference in Paris in 2015, becoming one of the main players in the debate on climate change in the field of international architecture. Stefano Boeri is co-chair of the scientific committee of the World Forum on Urban Forests (the first global Forum on the topic of urban forestry) and in 2019 at the UN Climate Action Summit  he presented the Green Urban Oases project in New York , created together with the FAO, C40, UN Habitat and other international research institutes. Stefano Boeri Architetti is currently working on international urban forestation projects such as Vertical Forests in Lausanne, Utrecht, Eindhoven (2021) and Nanjing and several Forest Cities projects around the world. Since 2020, Stefano Boeri is President of the Scientific Committee of Forestami, the project aimed at planting 3 million trees in the metropolitan area of Milan within 2030.