The Oak Tree Observatory
The Oak Tree Observatory is a proposal for a large public art project, designed for installation in the hills of northern California, which are peppered with many large oak trees. The structure can be thought of as a kind of monument to the oak tree, celebrating its beauty, as well as its crucial contributions to maintaining a healthy planet for all of us.
The large structure would be made entirely from air-purifying cast concrete, symbolically and functionally referring to the leaves of the oak tree, which also help to clean the air. The basic shape of the hemispherical observatory symbolically refers to the shape of the earth, and to the shape of most cosmic observatories. A spiral walkway wraps around the hemisphere, leading visitors to the top of the structure where they encounter a large oak tree, (from the top) which has been isolated from the surrounding landscape and transplanted into the hemispherical portion of the observatory. The design of the Oak Tree Observatory orients the viewing of the tree by the visitors from the top down (instead of the normal bottom up) in order to heighten their awareness of it, by encountering the oak tree in a new and unexpected way. The hemispherical shape of the structure is also designed to collect and store rainwater, which is used to water the tree, and the excess is used to water the surrounding oak trees.
Status: Unbuilt
