Ancient Tree

摘要

Together with 16 other international design teams, Christ & Gantenbein were invited to build a folly in the new architectural park designed and curated by the artist and architect Ai Weiwei. In a new artificial landscape along the Wujiang River, in the hinterland of Shanghai, our plot was labelled with "no function". This lack of genre made the task even more frightening, being on the verge of even having to be declared "art. What is architecture even before becoming a shelter? Or what makes any structure a form of architecture? The archetype of the tree was capable of fulfilling two essential desires: creating a place and providing shelter from the sun and the rain. An artificial tree in an artificial landscape defining civic space.