The Floating Forest

Team 

Name: Ottavia Boletto

Nationality: Italian/English

Institution / Company:

Name: Meghan Mahoney

Nationality: American

Institution / Company:

– HONORABLE MENTION of 2020 Monument Competition

Traditionally stationary and heavily embedded within the confined ideological context they are built in, monuments as we have come to know them oftentimes lack the reach to represent society at large.

In response to this phenomenon, our project proposes a new generation of monuments: traveling monuments. 

These are nomadic entities that simultaneously belong to no one and to everyone. No longer tied to a single nation state, they celebrate our shared values and reflect our more fluid, globalized understanding of belonging and of permanence. The traveling monuments activate cities for temporary pockets of time before moving onto their next destination, becoming shared experiences; moments of connection that transcend all boundaries.

More specifically, the Floating Forest addresses the environmental crisis — perhaps the most pressing issue we collectively face in the 21st century. The monument of the traveling trees represents our most fundamental shared value and monumentalizes the fragile, perishable, and vulnerable natural world. Amid the incessant industrialization and commodification that has come to define our reality, the Floating Forest represents a cry for action, a comment on what should be a most unifying common goal. 

#SustainableImpact #Cities #TravelingMonuments #FloatingForest #Inclusive