TREE CYCLES

The felling of trees is often perceived as a great loss. Wood is sawn and removed, leaving a stump on the ground and a clearing in the canopy...

TREE CYCLES is an installation designed for the Chicago Architecture Biennial that explores the roles of trees through positioning growth, felling, transformation, fabrication, decay, and decomposition as a set of active (and normal) processes in a newly productive cityscape.

Harvested in the Chicago region, the grouped wood logs create an undulating surface for humans to gather and rest, with cavities for burrowing animals and overwintering pollinators. Embedded companion plants represent new growth on the fallen tree. This seating environment allows for new forms of kinship to develop with the creatures and processes with whom we share the Earth. Just as the tree stump being reclaimed by seedlings, the decay of the seating element forms the beginning of a new growth forest.

TREE CYCLES links the ground condition of mulch and decay to the life of the canopy above, representing Chicago trees in an in-between life stage that is vital to the health of the urban forest. The installation is a call for an expanded urban forestry agenda that involves people, continuously grows new trees, and embodies an imagined future for Elm and Ash trees, now highly at risk due to the invasive Emerald Ash Borer.

Through a first rehearsal installation at the intersection of N Clark Street and W Randolph Street in Chicago, we hope to initiate a series of performances that could transform vacant lots throughout the city with ritual and ecological care while simultaneously demonstrating the social and environmental benefits of fuller and extended urban forestry cycles. By bringing the installation to different locations, the grouped logs go back to the communities where wood is being harvested, potentially setting off new cycles of growth and decomposition.

client

Chicago Architecture Biennial

location

Chicago, Illinois

TEAM

Stoss John Bannon
Kara James
Illinois Institute of Technology 
The Floating Museum
Chicago Park District Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation Plandform