When seen from the distance, great architectural wonders can serve as welcoming, iconic symbols for cities and regions. After all, who hasn’t felt compelled to grab their phone and snap photos of famous landmarks as soon as they come into view from the aeroplane window?
Rafael Viñoly Architects, the globally renowned studio responsible for acclaimed contemporary architectural marvels like London’s 20 Fenchurch Street, NEMA Chicago, and Kuala Lumpur’s Setia Federal Hill, understands this phenomenon well.
The firm’s latest project encompasses the development of a new terminal at Florence’s Amerigo Vespucci airport, slated to become a pivotal landmark for the city, and an architectural icon for Italy as a whole.
Its groundbreaking design involves a 7.7ha rooftop vineyard gently sloping upward to complement the airport terminal that, upon completion of most of its features in 2026, will accommodate nearly six million international passengers annually.
Weighting the challenges of a rooftop vineyard
Rooftop greenery isn’t a novel concept. Rafael Viñoly Architects’ Buenos Aires University project, for instance, itself boasts a roof almost entirely covered in greenery. Unlike conventional green roofs however, designing a building with spacious and ample interiors while accommodating productive fruit plants on their top presents a unique set of challenges.
‘The main difficulty associated with a rooftop vineyard has to do with how you handle weight,’ said Rafael Viñoly Architects director, Román Viñoly. ‘You need a certain amount of soil to grow plants, and that soil needs to be wet. These things have a mass not easy to deal
