Italian architect and ‘vertical forest’ pioneer Stefano Boeri has unveiled his design for a pair of towers in Nanjing, east China, covered by 1,100 trees and 2,500 cascading plants and shrubs.

The Nanjing Green Towers complex will house a museum, a green architecture school, a private club and offices in one of the buildings, and a Hyatt hotel with rooftop pool in the other. A 20m high podium will support the towers and host multi-brands shops, a food market, restaurants, a conference hall and exhibition spaces.

Around 600 tall trees and 500 medium-sized trees from 23 local species will line the facades of the buildings, with plants and shrubs also covering 6,000sq m. The two towers will be characterised by the interchange of balconies and green tanks to support the greenery, following the prototype of Boeri’s most famous vertical forests in Milan and Lausanne.

According to Boeri, this urban forestation will help to regenerate local biodiversity by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing about 60 kg of oxygen per day.

The project is being bankrolled by the state-owned Nanjing Yang Zi National Investment Group. It will be located in Nanjing’s Pukou District as a driver for the wider Yangtze River economic zone.

The project, scheduled for completion in 2018, is billed by the developers as “the first vertical forest built in Asia,” although Boeri is also overseeing similarly green schemes in the Chinese cities Shijiazhuang, Liuzhou, Guizhou, Shanghai and Chongqing.