Wonderwoods
Architect: Stefano Boeri Architetti
Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands
Type: Residential, Office
Year: 2024
Photographs: Milan Hofmans
10 years after Bosco Verticale, the new Dutch “vertical forest”, 104 metres high and built with an innovative prefabrication system, has won the prestigious award that every year celebrates the most sustainable and visionary projects in the international real estate sector.
“Wonderwoods Vertical Forest”, inaugurated a few weeks ago and already inhabited, represents the first example of a multipurpose vertical forest: a building/city that houses residences, offices, commercial areas, ateliers, services and public spaces.
The following description is courtesy of the architects. The “Wonderwoods Vertical Forest”, designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti and built by the developer G&S& in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, won the MIPIM Award 2025 in the Best Mixed-Use Project category in Cannes .
For Studio Stefano Boeri Architetti, the award was collected at the ceremony in Cannes by architect Stefano Boeri and architect Francesca Cesa Bianchi, partner of Stefano Boeri Architetti, who declared:
“Wonderwoods Vertical Forest hosts different functions – commercial areas, services, residences of various types and sizes, offices, ateliers, green areas and spaces for sports and cultural activities – both public and private, intended for a heterogeneous user base. Furthermore, on the seventh floor, a public square and a pedestrian street connect the tower to the MVSA building. Among its green and tree-lined facades, our vertical forest in Utrecht hosts a real city. The recognition of the MIPIM Award as the best “Mixed Use” building in the world, has captured the profoundly urban character of Wonderwoods: a multipurpose and highly biodiverse architecture, open to the daily life of the citizens, plants and birds of Utrecht”.
Architecture Guide to Amsterdam
Explore all our guides at avontuura.com/shop
The MIPIM Award is the international prize that celebrates the most useful, sustainable and visionary projects in the sector that seek to improve the prospects of the built environment, in line with ESG objectives. The 2025 edition of the award, created in 1991 by MIPIM (the world’s largest event dedicated to real estate and the main contact platform between global capital and the most innovative solutions in the real estate and urban development sector, opened this year by Mario Draghi and the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan), saw the participation of over 200 projects from 36 countries: of these, 39 projects from 22 countries reached the finals in the 10 categories. In the Best Mixed-Use Project category, they reached the finals together with Wonderwoods Vertical Forest, One Dojima Project in Tokyo in Japan, Praça Henrique Monteiro in São Paulo in Brazil and True Digital Park West in Bangkok in Thailand. Stefano Boeri Architetti is the only Italian practice among the winners of this edition.
Wonderwoods Vertical Forest Project Details
The Wonderwoods Vertical Forest is part of the larger Wonderwoods project, which also includes a second building designed by MVSA.The Two Towersconnected by a bridge, form together a green oasis in the Beurskwartier area, the new pedestrian zone near the central station of Utrecht (city centre) in the Netherlands.
The Wonderwoods Vertical Forest building houses approximately 200 apartments of various types designed for a heterogeneous user base, along with commercial activities, areas for sports and leisure and spaces for restaurants. In terms of functional mix, the basement hosts, on the ground floor, bicycle parking and public spaces, while on the upper floors, there are offices, fitness areas, together with a complex system of duplex residences capable of combining residential spaces and ateliers. On the seventh floor, spaces for restaurants, both indoor and outdoor, enliven the connecting bridge between the two buildings, characterized by hanging gardens and a wide view of the city.
With 360 trees and 50,000 plants of 30 different native species, equivalent to the vegetation of a hectare of forest, the Wonderwoods Vertical Forest is a living architecture with facades that change in color composition and size of the foliage. The appearance of the facades varies according to the seasons, the incidence of sunlight and the growth of the plants.
This is a real urban ecosystem, a haven for the biodiversity of living species and in particular of the birds that populate the Dutch skies and find shelter in the circular holes created specifically in the facades of Wonderwoods Vertical Forest to house their nests.
The apartments of the Wonderwoods Vertical Forest are characterized by a strong presence of greenery on the terraces and balconies and enjoy a high level of natural lighting and an open view of the surrounding urban landscape; the maintenance of the greenery is managed through a centralized condominium station which, thanks to a system of sensors, makes it possible to control the irrigation system and schedule pruning interventions.
Specifically, the building project, created using the prefabrication technique for the facades and the system of balconies, it stands out for a careful articulation of the volumes calibrated, on the different levels, with the specific conditions of the site. The building is in fact marked by overlapping “orders”, which define a rotation of the building along the vertical axis: a movement that progressively detaches it from the alignment with the layout of Croeselaan street, allowing it to be arranged according to an east-west orientation. If on the north corner the tower constitutes the “bow” of a system of blocks that are arranged on the road axis, on the south side it is oriented to allow a connection at the seventh floor with the adjacent building, designed by MVSA.
Among the sustainability elements of the Wonderwoods project, the area has been made entirely pedestrian and, under the buildings, a water storage system allows for the collection, recovery and disposal of rainwater.
After the social housing project Trudo Vertical Forest in Eindhoven (realized by Stefano Boeri Architetti in 2021), Wonderwoods Vertical Forest is the first Bosco Verticale in the Netherlands that hosts public functions and is open to all citizens, with the aim of making this new architectural typology increasingly integrated with the urban fabric and accessible to all.
Project Credits
- Project: Stefano Boeri Architetti (Wonderwoods Vertical Forest)
- Design team (Wonderwoods Vertical Forest)
- Founding partner: Stefano Boeri
- Partner and project director: Francesca Cesa Bianchi
- Project leader: Paolo Russo
- Team: Benedetta Cremaschi, Marco Neri, Lorenzo Masotto, Yulia Filatova, Carolina Boccella, Agostino Bucci
Consultants
- Botanical consultant and landscape design for the facades: Laura Gatti
- Local architect and executive project: INBO
- Economic feasibility assessment: Terberg Total Installaties
- Structural design: Van Rossum
- Botanical consultant and landscape design for roofs: ARCADIS Landschapsarchitectuur;
- General contractor: Boele & van Eesteren
- Landscape contractor: Koninklijke Ginkel Groep
