build a tree

This is pretty out there but may change your perspective.

Drinking coffee allows some serious free association. And an extraordinarily strong cup brought me a thought exercise worth sharing. I want you to follow along using your most creative immersive imaginings… pretend that you’re there and can see the scenario I describe. It will be worth it.

You are the lead designer and have a talented team of engineers, artists, builders and makers in your crew. You’ve been tasked by an eccentric and well funded client to design and build a substantial tree like the one in the photo. Let the complexity of this project sink in. You’re going to need several artists to build out the shape of the tree structure, another team just to sketch out the leaf design. And you’re going to need a massive team to actually craft the thousands of leaves out of, oh I don’t know… silk with interlaced bamboo elements, dyed with matcha?

Then you’ll task your engineers & builders to make the artist’s vision a reality. You’ll source exotic wood (yes I see the irony in using wood) and find people to carve it to shape. Engineers will need to have some internal cabling under high tension to keep the massive structure robust and dynamic. The root system will require similar attention.

Imagine an eighty foot tall tree actually being constructed in this manner and the crew both onsite and in factories to create this masterpiece of beauty and shade. It would be an absolutely massive undertaking with a costs ringing in at $400k? $800k? A million??? Imagine just the leaf installers on scaffolding going leaf-by-leaf hand tying each leaf stem to the ends of branches. A dozen skilled leafers™ for three weeks.

Next time you come upon an impressively big tree, think about it through this slightly crazy lens. It is through this absurd thought exercise that I see trees as impossibly beautiful and amazing. And in this exercise, the built tree isn’t doing the alchemy of photosynthesis and producing oxygen. All of this happens for free from a tiny seed. No crew, no engineers, no project leader. A seed, water, soil and time. F#(*#ing unbelievable.

Happy Earth Day!