Sf
Shapes of the Forest
2019
Exhibition installation with LCLA office - Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hansson. The project intreprets the Oslo’s public peri urban forest as a carpet.
“The boreal forest is the quintessential public space in Oslo. On a Saturday afternoon to be in the city is to be in the forest. This space is a machine to produce timber, however its use as a backdrop for all to enjoy led to decades of discussion and policymaking. The outcome is forest zoning plan generated by 4 key rules, the rules attempt to hide timber extraction from those touring nature:
1. No planting trees in neat rows;
2. Maintain a buffer of trees around paths;
3. Limits the size of clearings or clear cuts;
4. No orthogonal cuts, follow topography.
The forest is governed by the zoning plan, or the addresses where trees live and gives the forest a scalable and governable graticule.
The project plays with the loopholes of these Norwegian forestry rules and then interprets the Norwegian forest as a large wool carpet, imagining timber harvesting as a design technique to formalize collective spaces in the forest. By embracing the artificiality of forestry, new spatial opportunities are possible for this urban asset. The “Shapes of the forest” aims to use the extraction of timber as a design tool to create open-air rooms.
New shapes amplify the aesthetic possibilities of the clearings, as well as playfully establish a dialogue with the dynamic forms that resist clear definition.
“The boreal forest is the quintessential public space in Oslo. On a Saturday afternoon to be in the city is to be in the forest. This space is a machine to produce timber, however its use as a backdrop for all to enjoy led to decades of discussion and policymaking. The outcome is forest zoning plan generated by 4 key rules, the rules attempt to hide timber extraction from those touring nature:
1. No planting trees in neat rows;
2. Maintain a buffer of trees around paths;
3. Limits the size of clearings or clear cuts;
4. No orthogonal cuts, follow topography.
The forest is governed by the zoning plan, or the addresses where trees live and gives the forest a scalable and governable graticule.
The project plays with the loopholes of these Norwegian forestry rules and then interprets the Norwegian forest as a large wool carpet, imagining timber harvesting as a design technique to formalize collective spaces in the forest. By embracing the artificiality of forestry, new spatial opportunities are possible for this urban asset. The “Shapes of the forest” aims to use the extraction of timber as a design tool to create open-air rooms.
New shapes amplify the aesthetic possibilities of the clearings, as well as playfully establish a dialogue with the dynamic forms that resist clear definition.
