Fleeting Forest

Fleeting Forest is 2023’s winter art installation at Granary Square, Kings Cross. Commissioned by Argent and designed with Local Works Studio in collaboration with Webb Yates, Studio Dekka, Aswarm, Cameron Bray from CSM Architecture and curator Rebecca Heald, Fleeting Forest is an assemblage of trees, passing through the square on a winter stop-over, on their way to permanent homes in public parks, community gardens and schools elsewhere in London.

A friendly copse is made up of nursery grown trees, as well as pine and birch saplings from Ashdown Forest, and other plant species often found on the commons. The structure is retained by straw bale walls and chestnut fencing and creates a human-scale square within a square. The installation embraces the seasonality of the winter woodland - bare branches, fallen leaves, berries and damp earth - as an alternative to the traditional cut and decorated Christmas tree. At the heart of the project is an exploration of how a temporary installation can positively impact communities and environments through the way we sensitively gather and disperse materials.

Some of the nursery trees have been selected because they are ‘wonky’, hard-to-sell or have unusual shapes and markings, after being damaged in bad weather, during transport or by animals while at the nursery. Many of the saplings and ground cover plants were collected during habitat creation works as part of the conservation of Ashdown Forest in Sussex. The trees are held in raised planters made from light-touch natural materials that capture carbon as they grow and can be reused or composted once the installation comes to an end.

The temporary habitat of Fleeting Forest is also designed to serve as an open-air seminar room for architecture students from neighbouring Central Saint Martins, to gather, reflect and discuss the state of our woodland habitats and their potential to help build a regenerative, greener urban environment.