History
BAM - Biblioteca degli Alberi Milano is a contemporary park conceived as an urban botanical library with an incredible wealth of plants. It contains over 100 botanical species, more than 500 trees forming 22 circular forests and 135,000 aromatic plants, hedges, shrubs, bulbs, creepers and herbaceous plants.
It also features a small pond hosting aquatic plant: this creates an ideal ecosystem for pollinating insects bird.
Biblioteca degli Alberi depicts an innovative public-private partnership. A park of the municipality of Milan built by COIMA, it is managed by Fondazione Riccardo Catella that with the creation of the BAM project, is tasked with its maintenance, security and cultural programme.
The park was inaugurated on 8 September 2019 with an open-air concert by the Philharmonic of the Scala and with over 3000 people attending, already confirming its vocation of cultural hub of the city. Spreading over 10 hectares, it is a magical place where vegetation and paths intertwine to create a chequerboard of green rooms, irregular fields, circular forests, flowering lawns and equipped areas for children's play and for fitness and where the paving is designed with cutting edge characteristics.
Biblioteca degli Alberi was designed by the Dutch studio Inside Outside Petra Blaisse and is also the only park in Italy that hosts the work of landscape master Piet Oudolf, famous for his spontaneous plants gardens.
BAM is a cultural park that looks to international examples and presents itself as a model for the future developments of urban parks in Italy. An open-air theatre, BAM has tasked its cultural director with the creation of a programme offering more than 200 cultural moments a year, free of charge and devoted to the nature-culture combination. These activities go by the name of BAMoment: spread out all year long to celebrate the paces of nature, conceived to be experienced outdoors, and draw inspiration from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
