This Majestic Cathedral Is Made Of Living, Breathing Trees

This is an ever-changing world, but we keep destroying it in an attempt to create something new. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Italian artist, Giuliano Mauri, partnered with Nature. His vision was to create a striking building, but instead of cutting them, his design involves the use of living trees.

In 2001, Mauri started creating his majestic work of art at the foot of Mount Arera, in Bergamo, in Northern Italy. Eight years later, he passed away, and it was completed a year later, as part of the United Nations’ International Year of Biodiversity.

Nowadays, it is a memorial of Mauri’s incredible talent and art.

The Tree Cathedral, or Cattedrale Vegetale, has traded stone for saplings, and it will eventually be an impressive place of worship.

Mauri planted two groves of trees that grow into spectacular basilicas, and its 42 columns form a basilica for five isles. He initially created cages with tree stumps and then planted the two groves of trees with 80 horn-bean saplings inside the cages.

Over time, as the wood disintegrates, they will grow into large trees, nature will fill in the gaps, and the result will be a vaulted canopy ceiling made of tree branches and leaves.

The huge project involved 1,800 spruce trunks, along with 600 chestnut tree branches, secured together with 6,000 meters of hazelnut twigs. They will eventually grow into a natural roof over the cathedral.

It takes up 650 sq. meters, as it is over 90 feet long, 80 feet wide and between 16 feet up to 70 feet tall. Yet, as the man labor was finished in 2010, it is Nature’s turn now to complete the immense cathedral.

The all-natural, organic cathedral is acknowledged as one of the world’s most impressive forms of “natural architecture.”

Giuliano Mauri is a popular artist, renowned for his natural architecture designs and his multiple collaborations like the Venice Biennale, Milan Triennale, and Biennale of Penne.