Lockdown grinds on, and so if you cannot reach the UK’s green spaces, then why not have Britain’s wild landscape come to you? From June, Londoners will have access to a small forest in the centre of the city after Es Devlin, the designer and artist who has collaborated with Kanye West and Lady Gaga, announced an ambitious new project to mark the opening of the upcoming London Design Biennale this summer.
Devlin is the artistic director of the Biennale, and her centrepiece design for the event, entitled
Forest For Change, will take the form of a temporary urban wood comprising 400 trees from 23 species native to Northern Europe and the UK (at the end of the biennale, they will be rehomed). The forest will take metaphorical root in the central courtyard of Somerset House on the Strand, the famous neoclassical building that is home to the Courtauld Institute of Art and other arts and culture organisations; by greening the otherwise stark Palladian space, Devlin’s centrepiece forest will tie into the theme of sustainability that the Biennale has chosen to promote.