ForesTree
Conceived as a park on the 11th Floor, a relaxed creative space for employee to gather and work, with ForesTree is the anchor. Asked to take over from another architect, I stipulated two conditions: The first was that the other architect step away from the project by choice, and the second was that we do the tree differently. They had intended to install a plastic hyperrealistic tree and that seemed to lack depth of character. I felt people would se it and say "cool" and move along. We wanted people to see it, say "WOW" and walk over to touch it. I did my best to communicate my intentions to the client, but he later told me he didn't understand what I was proposing, didn't particularly like my sketches, but he trusted me. The name of the piece is derived from the fact that we took a forest of individual pieces of wood, and assembled them to make a tree. Working at night (hence the nickname "The Midnight carpenter") rumors spread through the building of a "tree" that was bing built on the 11th floor. Staff and strangers would stick their head in the door to sneak a peak. The room where the tree was grown is 20' (6.1M) by 50' (15.2M) by 15' (4.6M) high and the tree reached for the far corners.
