Image: Tom Shields. Forest for the Chairs (2013). Installation at North Carolina Museum of Art, Penland, NC, USA.
Synthesis Workshop: Life and Death in a City of Trees: re-imagining how urban timber recovery supports sustainable forests
School of Art & Design & Fenner School for Environment & Society
12-13 September 2019
Living city trees contribute significant benefits to the health and well-being of urban environments and residents. However, the full tree cycle includes dying, and trees at end-of useful-life typically become costly liabilities for cities.
Presenters and participants worked together to unpack problems, identify obstacles, and propose creative solutions to city tree management and succession planning for Australian urban treescapes. The symposium interrogated how these ideas can be modelled in Canberra, a designed city, with its own unique urban forest.
The Synthesis Workshop was organised as a cross-disciplinary initiative between School of Art & Design lecturer Ashley Eriksmoen, Fenner School of Environment and Society Associate Professor Cris Brack, and Dr Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for Public Awareness of Science, with administrative assistance from Dr Elisa deCourcy. The workshop was fully funded through the Fenner School’s Environment and Society Synthesis Program (ESSP) and the Research School of Humanities & the Arts Cross College Research Scheme.
Brack, Eriksmoen and Lamberts are currently working towards an ARC Linkage Grant and other external funding with industry, government, and cross-institutional partnerships.