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Pollution-fighting Vertical Forest buildings coming to China

Two living, breathing buildings will be able to produce around 130 pounds of clean oxygen a day.

Daniel Van Boom Senior Writer
Daniel Van Boom is an award-winning Senior Writer based in Sydney, Australia. Daniel Van Boom covers cryptocurrency, NFTs, culture and global issues. When not writing, Daniel Van Boom practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reads as much as he can, and speaks about himself in the third person.
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Watch this: Vertical forest takes root in China

China has pollution problems, and one Italian architect could have some answers.

The Chinese city of Nanjing is getting a Vertical Forest, a set of two buildings stylised with around 1,100 trees and a combination of over 2,500 shrubs and plants.

But it's not all about how it looks: The Nanjing Towers will absorb enough carbon dioxide to make around 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of oxygen every day, an official press release claimed. China's Vertical Forest is scheduled to be completed sometime next year.

At the time of writing, Nanjing has an air-quality index of 167, which categorises it as "unhealthy." For reference, Sydney and New York both have "moderate" indexes of around 60, while London sits at about 100, teetering between "moderate" and "unhealthy."

It'll be the third city to get a Vertical Forest, following ones built in Milan, Italy and Lausanne, Switzerland.

The towers will stand at 354 and 656 feet tall, respectively (that's 107 and 199 metres), reports Italian publication Living. The shorter tower will house a Hyatt hotel, while the taller one will be home to a museum, offices and an architecture school.

It won't stop here though, as Boeri has plans to build similar structures in Chongqing, Shijiazhuang, Liuzhou, Guizhou and Shanghai, according to Living.

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