Tree as Archive

In November 2020 Vijverhofstraat entered the first stage of its redevelopment. From 31 October to 2 November 19 healthy Robinia trees were cut, despite strong disagreement from the local residents. 

This project critically examines the spatialization of bureaucratic processes. Tree as Archive is a proposition for a bollard infrastructure, enabling the citizen to disrupt the circulation of the urban space to create new spatial contexts to occupy. By that, it becomes the materialization of the resident’s disagreement against the new layout of the street, collecting stories of the movement that emerged with the cutting of trees. Because wood samples can be read as archives of everything that has happened to the tree, the same logic is applied to the installation. The installation, therefore, becomes an archive of events that happened around the trees.