Trudo Vertical Forest

About this place

The Trudo Vertical Forest in Eindhoven's Strijp-S district is the world's first vertical forest built entirely as social housing. Completed in 2021, the 75-metre, 19-storey tower was designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti in collaboration with Dutch practice INBO, and commissioned by Sint-Trudo, a social housing association. The tower accommodates 125 apartments at affordable rent, wrapped in a dense canopy of 135 trees of various species and approximately 8,500 shrubs and perennial plants distributed across deep balconies cantilevering from the concrete structure. Each apartment has access to a green terrace; together the plantings create the equivalent of roughly 2,500 square metres of forest concentrated onto a single tower footprint. Boeri's vertical forest concept — first realised at the Bosco Verticale in Milan — is here tested in a social housing context, challenging the assumption that biophilic density is exclusively a luxury typology. The building's structural system is designed to carry the permanent load of mature trees, with reinforced concrete floor plates and bespoke steel balcony brackets engineered to handle the combined weight of soil, water and vegetation. The tower has become a landmark of the Strijp-S regeneration — a district that has reframed Eindhoven as a city of design and innovation — and a reference point internationally for integrating ecological mass and urban density in subsidised residential development.