Thursday Salute to Originals: Wooden Caverns
You’d usually search for a cave hidden in a forest, but in Bristol, UK, the forest itself has become a cavernous temple.
Over three years, designer Katie Paterson and architects Zeller and Moye collaborated to create Hollow — a wooden cavern that showcases the diversity of various tree species from around the world.
With over 10,000 tree samples collected, the group created a modular space full of small, rectangular wooden “prisms” from floor to ceiling. The emerging rectangle rods resemble stalactites and stalagmites in a cave but with a precise geometric form.
The ceiling of the installation is open to let patches of sunlight shine through. Looking upward, it almost resembles light peeking through a tree canopy in a forest.
The core theme of this installment is biodiversity, and Patterson, Zeller and Moye certainly worked hard to ensure that diverse samples are on display here. From Metuselah trees in the White Mountains of California to the infamous Indian Banyan Tree where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, the wooden cavern is a thorough representation of botanical variety across the globe.
This Thursday, we’re saluting Kattie Paterson, Zeller and Moye and the Hollow public installation. Their project serves as a temple to biodiversity, expressed through a simplicity of materiality and form.
You can find out more about Hollow here on its website.
Sources: Hollow, This is Colossal