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| Dia Art Foundation planted trees in New York as part of Beuys exhibition (http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/51/1295) |
Recently the best architects, such as Herzog and deMeuron
integrate plants into their buildings, for example the green wall by Patrick
Blanc at Caixa Forum in Madrid, and the proposed hanging garden for the new
Miami Art Museum. Jean Nouvel included a
similar green wall at the new Musée de Quai Branly in Paris. These vertical gardens are works of art that
require intense irrigation and maintenance because the plants must survive
separated from the rich and complex dirt that supports most gardens. Like hothouse flowers, they grow and change, yet
not so much that they challenge the architecture.
Artist Joseph Beuys was a friend and mentor of Jacques
Herzog and Pierre deMeuron. Beuys argued
that art could make real change in the world. In 1982, he undertook planting 7000
oak trees along the streets of Dusseldorf, each with a basalt stele planted
next to it. The trees grew, offering
shade and life to otherwise barren streets, the stones weathered, sometimes
supporting some small mosses and lichens.
As the trees grew larger every year in their cloaks of changing leaves,
the life they supported on the street and in their branches also grows, while
the stones seem to become smaller and less significant. Beuys wrote,
“So now we have six- and seven-year-old oaks, and the stone dominates
them. In a few years' time, stone and tree will be in balance, and in twenty to
thirty years' time we may see that gradually, the stone has become an adjunct
at the foot of the oak or whatever tree it may be.” (http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/51/1295).
Are architects daring enough to risk bringing vigorous life
into the midst of buildings, knowing that their stones will diminish in significance
as life takes over? And are they then willing to have their weathered buildings
stand even after the oak has lived its life and rotted, perhaps to feed another
tree. What significance then is the
basalt, like a gravestone?
