By bicycle, along an elevated pedestrian and cycle track that runs through the trees, resting on two parallel rows of plants that act as pillars will probably be a fantastic experience.

We spent the second half of the last century in the wildest overbuilding of the soil, creating dormitory cities, squalid suburbs, consumed green spaces and building without a soul.

A building even without a heart, made for money and not for man, where lives were consumed between work, commitments, sacrifices and few hopes, living in depersonalized buildings far from nature.

Nature, this is the point. We have tried to erase the primary relationship between man and the environment, filling it with concrete, asphalt, machines in one continuous sequence.

Over the last 10 years the needs of the population have changed, attention to the environment has become a driving force and a counter-exodus from the cities, in search of housing on a human scale, it made designers and builders think.

A new housing but also social need, with the need to rethink a less concrete-centric urbanization, in favor of green spaces in which to restore a balance with oneself themselves and with the world.

The project of the CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and the non-profit organization GAL "The Tree Path" fit into this philosophy. raised path for pedestrians and cyclists supported by more than a thousand trees, as Cuoghi Dalila tells us.

The sensory path leads to Sabbioneta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northern Italy, and was developed in close collaboration with OLA, the leading expert in a construction that uses trees as architectural elements.

Arrive in Sabbioneta, one of the most famous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, by bicycle, along an elevated pedestrian and cycle track that runs through the trees, resting on two parallel rows of plants that act as pillars will probably be a fantastic experience.

A sustainable and smart solution at the same time: people can walk or cycle on a raised platform in the treetops, while the sensors integrated into the greenery track environmental conditions in real time.

Indissoluble relationship between architecture and nature

The tree path winds vertically on three different levels, rising up to six meters above the ground, bypassing road traffic and waterways.

The path incorporates digital sensors to measure multiple factors in the atmosphere, from air pollution to the health and growth of individual trees.

The sensors will also help ensure that all living organisms along the way can respond to changing environmental conditions or structural loads, realizing a vision of "Internet of trees ".

In this project, the CRA studio follows OLA - Office for Living Architecture, the office specializing in the Baubotanik technique with which CRA collaborated for this project.

In the past they have used different species such as willow, plane tree, poplar, birch and hornbeam with structural function. All sufficiently flexible and vigorous trees with thin barks that can be easily grafted.

Once the trees have been planted, how long will it take for them to grow before the walkway can be built?

This is a very interesting feature of the project. The rhythms of human construction will not be followed, but those of nature.

Obviously the Baubotanik technique involves accompanying the growth of trees, so that the latter process can unfold in parallel with an increasingly solid support of the structure.

It is a way of thinking about architecture over a long period of time: an antidote to certain hasty constructions ...

What materials will the suspended walkway be made of?

In this concept phase we hypothesized a light metal structure, on which organic materials are grafted - wood, mycelium and more.

Will the walkway be completely supported by trees or are there any specific support works made with other materials?

Above all at the beginning there will also be temporary support structures - the world of the natural and the artificial that join hands!

Photo: studio CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.