Milan’s Vertical Forest

Milan’s Vertical Forest from Stefan Boeri Architects.

The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) will be the greenest building in Milan when completed, which is one of Europe’s most polluted cities.

Milan’s Vertical Forest from Stefan Boeri Architects.

Designed by Stefan Boeri Architects, as part of their BioMilano vision to incorporate 60 abandoned farms into a greenbelt surrounding the city. The Bosco Verticale building has a green façade planted with dense forest systems to provide a building microclimate and to filter out polluting dust particles. The living bio-canopy also absorbs CO2, oxygenates the air, moderates extreme temperatures and lowers noise pollution, providing aesthetic beauty and lowering living costs.

Milan’s Vertical Forest from Stefan Boeri Architects.

Each apartment balcony will have trees (900 plantings are planned for the two buildings) that will provide shade in the summer and drop their leaves in winter to allow in winter sunlight. Plant irrigation is provided via a grey-water filtration. Additionally, photovoltaic power generation will help provide sustainable power to the building.

Visit: http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/

Via Inhabitat

Earthbag Homes

' I have no money,
no resources,
no hopes,
I am the happiest man alive.'
-Henry Millar-

Time Does not Bring Relief: You all have lied

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Time Does Not Bring Relief” from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with permission of Elizabeth Barnett and Holly Peppe, Literary Executors, The Millay Society.

Source: Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2004)

Do Not Stand

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there.

I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there.

I did not die.

"Written at least 50 years ago, this poem has been attributed at different times 

to J.T. Wiggins (an English 'migr' to America), two Americans: Mary E. Fry and

 Marianne Reinhardt, and more recently to Stephen Cummins, a British soldier 

killed in Northern Ireland who left a copy for his relatives. Others claim it is a 

Navajo burial prayer.

The following was taken from The London Magazine December / January 2005:

Mary Elizabeth Frye nee Clark was born in Dayton, Ohio, on November 13th 1905. 

She died on September 15th 2004. Mary Frye, who was living in Baltimore at the

 time, wrote the poem in 1932. She had never written any poetry, but the plight 

of a German Jewish girl, Margaret Schwarzkopf, who was staying with her and her 

husband, inspired the poem. She wrote it down on a brown paper shopping bag. 

Margaret Schwarzkopf  had been worrying about her mother, who was ill in Germany. 

The rise of Anti-Semitism had made it unwise for her to join her mother. When her 

mother died, she told Mary Frye she had not had the chance to stand by her mother's

 grave and weep.

Mary Frye circulated the poem privately. Because she never published or copyrighted

it, there is no definitive version. She wrote other poems, but this, her first, endured.

 Her obituary in The Times made it clear that she was the undisputed author this famous

 poem, which has been recited at funerals and on other appropriate occasions around the

 world for seventy years. A 1996 Bookworm poll named it the Nation's Favourite Poem" 

[London Magazine Editor, Sebastian Barker] "

This poem was read at George Best's Funeral  3rd December 2005