What Is This Hill Doing in the Middle of the City?

Описание: At first, it looks like a hill in the middle of Düsseldorf.

But it’s actually a commercial building, offices and retail space, wrapped in more than 30,000 living plants. Kö-Bogen II is the largest green façade in Europe, and it represents a major shift in how sustainable architecture and urban design are evolving in dense city centers.

Built on a site that was once dominated by car infrastructure, the project replaced roads and traffic systems with pedestrian space and living landscape. Designed by Ingenhoven Architects, the building integrates eight kilometers of hornbeam hedges directly into its façade, turning architecture into environmental infrastructure.

This video explores how green architecture can help reduce urban heat, improve air quality, support biodiversity, and rethink the relationship between buildings and public space.

But more importantly, it asks a bigger question:

What role should buildings play in the future of our cities?

As climate adaptation becomes central to city planning, projects like Kö-Bogen II challenge the idea that sustainability is something added on later. Instead, they suggest that architecture itself can become part of the ecological system.

Is this the future of urban development, or a rare exception?

If you're interested in architecture, city planning, sustainable design, or the future of cities, there’s much more happening beneath the surface than we usually notice.

Subscribe for more deep dives into how architecture is quietly reshaping the world around us.

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#sustainablearchitecture
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#cityplanning
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#landscapearchitecture
#climateadaptation
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#urbanfuture
#architecturelovers
#designthinking