Birds Grow a Forest on a Grand Urban Staircase: ACROS Fukuoka

The first time I encountered it was in a magazine.

When I was studying landscape architecture, I saw ACROS Fukuoka in a professional journal.
Greenery was clinging to the building's exterior walls.
Plants were planted in a stepped, terraced fashion, like a rice field.
I wondered if such a concept had really become a reality.

Since then, I have seen it in magazines and articles several times.
Every time I saw it, the plants and trees had increased.
The wall surface was becoming more and more covered in green.
It was as if the building itself was growing.

I was finally able to visit it in person just a few years ago.

It was already a forest.
It was lush and overgrown.
I couldn't even tell where the concrete walls I had first seen in the magazine were.
The branches and leaves were stretching out as if competing for space, to the point where I hesitated a little to climb it.
The deeper I went up the stairs to the higher floors, the denser the trees became.
Tall trees, shrubs, and grasses were growing wildly from the concrete stair walls.
There was a real forest in the middle of the city.

The connection to Tenjin Central Park on the adjacent lot was natural, and when resting in the park, it felt like the forest was right there.
The ordinary trees in the park surrounding the lawn and the grass and trees on the stairs.
The two sites had become a single natural space.
The concept had expanded just as it was.

It was designed by an American architect named Emilio Ambasz.
In a 1989 competition, the team that proposed a green open space for the city was selected.
He left behind the words that the concept of "buildings for the city, greenery for the suburbs" is an unhealthy misconception.

At the time of construction, 37,000 plants of 76 species were planted.
Now, there are over 50,000 plants of 120 species. The increase is not because people planted them.
It is because birds brought the seeds.
What was designed grew naturally.

When you enter the building, it doesn't feel like there is a forest above you.
It is an impressive building, and it felt strange.
There were two different worlds, inside and outside.

It is still growing even now.
In the middle of the busy, bustling city, it is growing.

Birds are carrying the next seeds, today and tomorrow.