Colorful Floral Façade Creates Botanical Experience For All Senses

A former industrial building in Milan’s arts district Brera has been dressed up with a façade of flowers, blooms and fragrance.

The installation, part of Milan’s recent Design Week, is called Flowerprints. The building it covers is the main office of local architecture firm Piuarch. The installation is made up of over 2,000 flowers, including roses, lilies, carnations, but also fragrant herbs like thyme, sage, lavender, rosemary and mint, creating a exciting visual experience. Making the botanical work complete, the installation features perfumes and outdoor fragrances that bare the scents of “fresh grass on a spring morning”. Sounds generating through metal elements and bells finish the project for all senses.

Piuarch itself was involved in the project, in collaboration with landscape architect Cornelius Gavril. He created the floral pattern by using a traditional technique, where the flowers are implanted onto potatoes, giving them structure, nutrients, and and making sure the flowers stay alive in the air. The flowers are spread out along 180 vertical lines, 10 meters high and spaced 20 cm apart all across the 35 meter length of the façade. The appearance of the installation changes in accordance with the weather and time of day, adding a unique and beautiful layer to the urban environment.

While (horizontal) garden landscaping has proved to be a field of experimentation and innovative designs, the landscaping of vertical gardens have mostly involved large slaps of green plants and trees. In Milan itself, a huge vertical forest building was realized. This has indeed been an amazing project, giving the city green space in an creative way. The Flowerprints project shows however that vertical greenery can have many more shapes and forms, like the way this more delicate project adds color, scents and sounds to the design.