The One Tree Project

THE ONE TREE P ROJ ECT Washington University in St. Louis MLA Studio / Spring 2017 In collaboration with Robert Birch • Alisa Blatter • Shu Guo Yuting Ji • Scott Mitchell • Jesse Vogler

the one tree project

This project is structured around the imminent destruction of Washington University’s historic Brooking’s Drive Oak Allée.

We begin with the hypothesis that landscape architecture has much to learn from a focused, intensive study of one tree.

This is a project-based studio steeped in multidisciplinary research—and as such does not begin with a known outcome but rather with a working method to offer a window into the greater meaning of trees in our urban ecosystem and cultures.

Laser scan point cloud data for each of the 43 Pin Oak Trees distilled from the entire scan.

Working with arborists, ecologists, landscape architects, artists, dendrochronologists, and archivists, we worked to understand and bring forward the many meanings of one tree—from root to crown, from microbial sub-soil cultures to species habitats in its highest branches, from the monoculture of the 43 pin oak trees in the allÊe to the diverse ecological community beyond.

The many ways of understanding one tree inform the ultimate direction of the studio resulting in various experimental platforms for exhibition that reframe this well-known cultural landscape and thank the trees for their 80 years of service

Aerial of the Brooking’s Drive Oak AllÊe April 2, 2017 captured using drone photography with assistance from Yi Zhang

3D LASER SCAN Using 3D laser scanning technology, we worked to capture 50 separate scans of the Brookings AllĂŠe to formulate a full scale point cloud scan of the entire space including all trees, building exteriors, and any other shape in the space.

ROOT EXCAVATION In an effort to truly understand the root system of a tree, we worked together to full uncover one main arterial root from one of the Pin Oak Trees. We used only our hands and hand tools.

SONIC TOMOGRAPHY Working with German tree expert Frank Rinn, we used sound waves to map the cross-sectional density of the trees. In doing so we gained knowledge regarding the quality of living material inside each specimen. Counter to what many believed these trees, 80 plus years in age, were still healthy, stable organisms.

Twenty Tree Core Samples taken from every tree of the inner Brookings AllĂŠe. Tree core samples reveal the inherent capacity of tree structure to archive its own history. In addition we collected the height, diameter at breast height and resistance of each tree.

Enclosure Construction and Reconstruction

ENCLOSURE 1.0 Constructed in response to our root archeology did site, this enclosure is conceived as a protective barrier between root trench and Brookings Allée - a space for entry within to the campus. This enclosure is based on a typical tree protection fence you see on construction sites, but in our case, we altered the inaccessible enclosure by creating a central entry void, and then bleacher seating. Through the misuse of the typical tree protection enclosure we were able to successfully appease the powers at be at Washington University who insisted we had to stop digging. Further, not only were we able to continue digging up the root, we were then able to more successfully invite those passing by into our dig site and talk to them about this historic space and its imminent transformation.

Through this enclosure we were able to invite audience into the otherwise quite project.

ENCLOSURE 2.0 Enclosure 2.0 came in response to the demise of the first enclosure. Unlike the first, this enclosure is not situated in the Brookings Allée. Instead it sits parallel to Forsyth Ave. in front of the Arts School. No longer is the enclosure intended for root watching, now it is a place to be with a tree. Nothing more, but the result was more powerful than we could have expected. We disassembled the first enclosure and reorganized the various pieces as a long and narrow space. This space is contemplative, unusual, freeing yet secure. A place open to all who pass-by, but it is only the brave who make it their own. I wonder why is it that in our Midwest culture, here in St. Louis people do not take a moment from their day, and pause - take time in this enclosure, feel entitled to use the enclosure. We may have built it for the public, but the public wasn’t coming.

ONE TREES To distill one from many. And then to build back up into a chorus of independent forms.

Patience is a requirement to collect the point data, patch and convert the points into a complete cloud, dissect the data into individual tree files, convert those individual tree files to formats that are usable in other programs, import those new tree files, apply animation, render, and compose.

Still from an animation of cross sections moving through trees submitted to the Cinema at City Garden film competition.

Animation was constructed using 3DS Max and Adobe After Effects.

TREE ENCOUNTERS As I begin to develop my design practice, I become more and more curious and cautious about the term ‘public’. We work with the public and design public space, but who is the public? With common use, the term public has lost specificity in meaning. Instead, I choose to use the term audience. Design is a performance, and we need to entice an audience to take ownership over environment; be participants in the choreography we establish through design.

My work, over the course of this semester, worked to frame The One Tree Project as a performance, a constant exhibition that drew in an audience amongst individual streams of investigations. Throughout I worked to broaden interest in the project and sought to welcome non-dendrophiles to participate in our explorations. As such, through The One Tree Project, I explored methods of building an audience and participate practice in landscape design. These moments of establishment and engagement with a public are entitled Tree Encounters.

TREE BREATH To be with a tree, not an opportunity we take or find often. Usually we notice their presence as means of shade, or accent to a naturalized landscape. Now is the moment to counteract that...

The beginning of a meditation I wrote specifically to engage in the present with a tree. To listen to or download the full meditation visit: theonetreeproject.org/2017/04/10/tree-breath/

Testing my meditation before improvements and publication.

AUDIENCE Contemporary audience takes form through many platforms. While I did focus on the web-precence of The One Tree Project via our blog and instagram, I especially worked to engage various groups around campus with our on-going investigations in physical space.

As an homage to Washu’s historic identity, I created a graphic for the project through a rerepresentation of the 1906 school yearbook The Hatchet. This graphic became the emblam for the various installations we constructed on campus over the course of the semester.

Top: Tour of The One Tree Project with the Alberti Program, an educational outreach initiative that provides St. Louis students ages 8-16 an opportunity to explore architecture and design through weekend workshops.

Bottom: Lecturer Michael Allen holds seminar class titled ‘The Unruly City’ inside The One Tree Project Enclosure 1.0

TREE TASTING Every Friday at 5:30pm, the Graduate Architecture Council (GAC) hosts a happy hour. In an effort to bring The One Tree Project to a larger audience, I worked with the GAC to host the happy hour in the Enclosure 2.0.

- subject to forces around it including the rules of drinking on campus. In order to drink outdoors on campus, the boundary of the even must be enclosed, you need need to serve food, and you need stamps.

TREE WALK This walk promoted the bodily experience of the Brookings Drive Pin Oak allée one last time. Participants completed an orchestrated mediation between the vastness of tree body and individual body by materially mapping the interconnected condition between these beings. Each participant partnered with one tree, and began their solo walk from that tree into the vastness of the allée — each establishing their individual trajectory, interacting with other participants and trees along the way. Pace, direction and interaction with fellow participants matter.

And so, while you begin at one tree – you go on a journey ultimately mapping out the constellation of trees and their interconnectivity that makes this landscape an allée. The material result is a mapping of individual paths, but also a mapping of interaction, and ultimately connectivity.

To conclude the performance, each participant joined hands and marched down the allée one last time as a collective being, interacting with the constellation of ribbon constructed minutes before. Finally, as a group we ran forth out from the university ripping through the ribbon destroying it through motion. The outcome: a sense of togetherness and shared sense of experience. Together a public mapped out the allée, and together they destroyed it.

Sunday May 21 2017 2:30pm Washington University entrance, Lindell at Skinker In partnership with The Department of Walking www.dptwlk.org

THE ONE TREE TREE TRIBUTE PROJECT Sunday May 21 2017 | 1:00 PM

1 Brookings Drive | At the base of steps

A gathering to acknowledge the oak trees in front of Brookings Hall for contributing and holding stories over their 80+ years of living on the Washington University campus. A prayer and blessing will be offered to thank them for their partnership and the spiritual, spatial, and co-evolving bonds that have emerged throughout this time.

Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies

Monday May 22 2017 | 9:00 AM

1 Brookings Drive | At the base of steps

TREE RAISING

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One Tree will be excavated then lifted by crane — roots and all — a ritual marking of this moment of transformation.

This intact tree, opens up a singular experience of the tree as an entire organism. As a material artifact this tree carries the incredible potential to enrich narrative and ecological continuities across this moment of transition.

Sam Fox School of Architecture and Urban Design

TREE DAY The One Tree Project culminated in tree lifting day where efforts were made to hydro excavate the roots of one tree so that it could be lifted out of the earth by crane and suspended such that it can be walked under. In the end, the tree’s foundations prevailed.

The tree was not lifted. No crane nor brain could outwit the strength of the tree’s root system. It was a spectacle. Tree people, active citizens, and university members came out to witness this extraordinary effort.

Margot Shafran 7514 Byron Place Apt 2E St. Louis MO, 63105 margot.shafran@gmail.com margot.shafran.org 513.482.0063 For more information about The One Tree Project visit: theonetreeproject.org