(All renderings by Carlo Ratti Associati Graphic Team: Gary di Silvio, Pasquale Milieri, Gianluca Zimbardi)
by Ron Bernthal
The international design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, the Office for Living Architecture (OLA), and the non-profit organization GAL Terre del Po has designed and proposed The Tree Path, an elevated bicycle route that will run in-between trees, resting on two parallel rows of plants that act as pillars.
Located in the northern Italian countryside of Lombardy the project leads to Sabbioneta, one of the country’s best-known UNESCO World Heritage Site, and explores sustainable mobility while blending the natural and the artificial. People can walk or cycle on a lifted platform between the treetops, while sensors embedded within the greenery track environmental conditions in real-time.
The Tree Path was designed by CRA in close collaboration with OLA, one of the world’s leading experts in a technique known as Baubotanik (“botanic construction” in German), by which trees can become ever-evolving architectural elements. The project envisions planting roughly one thousand trees, whose growth would be a central element of the design process. The plants would grow around a stainless steel handrail, building and transforming the path structure over the course of several years. The Tree Path unfolds vertically on three different levels, rising up to almost 20-feet above the ground, bypassing road traffic and waterways.
“What if one day we could grow architecture like a tree?” said Carlo Ratti, founding partner at CRA, and director of the Senseable City Lab at Boston’s MIT.” We are still very far from that future, but we can start exploring the convergence between the natural and the artificial. We can use trees as elements of construction, while leveraging the data from digital technologies to get a better understanding of the surrounding environment,”
The Tree Path will be part of the Italy’s VENTO Cycle Route, a 435 mile-long bicycle path that parallels the Po river across northern Italy, and includes Sabbioneta, via the neighboring town of Casalmaggiore. Sabbioneta, located near the city of Mantua, was put on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008 for its practical application of Renaissance urban planning theories. When fully constructed, VENTO will connect Venice to Turin, winding mostly along the Po River through the Po Valley by touching some of the largest cities in northern Italy such as Ferrara, Mantua and Milan, and countless small food, wine and artisan centers. The idea is to stimulate ecological mobility by creating a green passageway that adequately valorizes the natural and artistic beauties of the area. About 164 miles of the total 435 miles of the VENTO route will travel through parks and protected areas. Once finished, VENTO would be the longest bike path in Italy and one of the longest in Europe.
CRA has been investigating the convergence between the natural and the artificial with projects on different scales. In 2021, the studio completed The Greenary, a private residence in the province of Parma, Italy that revolves around a 33-foot tree placed at the center of the house. In the field of mobility, CRA also developed ideas for New Deal Paris, a speculative vision that would transform the main highways around the French capital through the large-scale adoption of autonomous vehicles and other forms of shared mobility. The office has also been drafting a comprehensive plan for sustainable mobility for the city of Prishtina, Kosovo, as part of an Urban Study commissioned by Manifesta 14, the Biennale of contemporary art and culture opening in Kosovo in July, 2022.
