Imagine a hotel that breathes alongside its guests, vacuuming up carbon dioxide and exchanging it for oxygen. That’s the vision Milan-based architect Stefano Boeri just unveiled for the Mountain Forest Hotel in Guizhou, China. The 180-suite hotel, opening in fall 2017, will feature at least 360 trees sprouting from specially designed balconies, recalling a hill on the site demolished years earlier. Like the architect’s other Vertical Forest projects in Italy and Switzerland, “it’s a symbol of restitution,” Boeri says. “Buildings have to take care of nature.”
–Julie Shapiro
This appears in the May 30, 2016 issue of TIME.
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