NEW YORK - A spooky ghost forest has grown in the heart of Manhattan: 49 dead trees have been planted in Madison Square Park by Maya Lin, the American architect and designer who in 1982, at just 21 years old, signed the moving war memorial of the Vietnam on the Mall in Washington, to put the spotlight on the devastating effects of climate change.
The "Ghost Forest" installation, which was originally supposed to open last summer, will be inaugurated on May 10 and will remain standing until November.
The name derives from a devastating natural phenomenon in which vast tracts of forests die due to extreme climatic events, the rise in sea levels and the consequent infiltration of salty waters into the soil.
"Wanting to create something intimately connected to the park, trees and the state of the Earth, I didn't want to introduce plants killed by beetles and other insects so as not to introduce new potentially pest species into the city. That's how we started looking for trees killed by climate. change, "Lin explained.
The choice fell on a group of 49 Atlantic cedars from Pine Barrens, a vast (but recently endangered) coniferous forest on the New Jersey coast.
The foresters who collaborated with the architect identified an area that was about to be cleared and in which dead or compromised cedar trees would be cleared to make room and give light to a younger generation.
Spring is still behind in New York, but in May those skeletal pines up to 20 meters tall will make a grisly contrast to the green foliage of the others in the park.
Lin has created, in collaboration with Cornell University's ornithology laboratory, a "soundscape" featuring calls and songs of extinct or endangered animals that once populated the New York area, their names read in languages. of the indigenous peoples who inhabited the island of Manhattan before the arrival of the white settlers.
In the autumn, the project will culminate with the planting of a thousand native trees and bushes in various parks in the five districts of the city.
"With a minimalist visual language, Maya's design emphasizes the precariousness and fragility of the natural world and reminds us of the consequences of inaction in the face of the climate crisis," said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, number two of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Lin is 61 years old and became famous when, still a student at Yale, she won the competition for the Vietnam Memorial.
His installation "Storm King Wavefield" - a series of earth "waves" that evoke an ocean - has been part of the Storm King Sculpture Park in the Hudson Valley for over a decade.
He also designed the Montgomery Civil Rights Memorial in Alabama and recently redesigned the Smith College Library in Northampton.