Over the last two years, the city of Madrid has hosted, and continues to host, the traveling exhibition of the Metropolitan Forest. It has three main objectives: first, to present Madrid's residents with the winning and finalist ideas from the competition held to redefine the future of their city; second, to communicate the processes the city will undertake regarding sustainability, urban resilience, and environmental education; and finally, to foster concrete strategic alliances between the Forest and the citizens of Madrid.
Project Description. The exhibition is a material and botanical cartography that reproduces the Metropolitan Forest ring on a large 103 m² wooden table, where the projects are presented, each in its corresponding location.
Next to the table are two mounds of mulch made from shredded fibers from trees brought down by Storm Filomena in January 2021. One, light in tone, is from freshly cut wood, and the other, darker, has undergone a longer decomposition process. Both mounds, “breathing” and releasing heat during this process, turn the exhibition into a living entity, with its own constantly changing textures and scents.
Within this context, the 42 m² ephemeral forest-garden consists of various native plants, shrubs, and small trees between one and four meters tall, arranged in root balls that protect their root systems for the duration of the installation. They are provided by El Retiro Nursery and the Municipal Nurseries of Casa de Campo. Some of the species included are Pinus halepensis, Pinus pinea, Pinus nigra, Quercus ilex, Quercus robur (Forestal), Aesculus hipocastanus, Olmos saphoro, Fraxinus angustofilia, or retama sphaerocarpa,
The exhibition is constructed alongside material entities. It is built from pine plywood panels. The prints are made to withstand the weather and ensure the highest graphic resolution for drawings, texts, and images, and each project can be accessed via QR codes that link to a digital version open to all citizens.
Due to its living design, the exhibition is itself a mini-forest—a small animal and plant environment containing the baseline components for a forest to grow: living soils, a mound of mulch undergoing organic composting, shrubs, trees, and the insects attracted to them. All of these are native elements that will make up the project. Its maintenance is, in itself, a distinctive task of the Metropolitan Forest, highlighting the delicacy and care that the project will require to grow.
Credits
Project: Madrid Metropolitan Forest Traveling Exhibition.
Location: El Retiro Park, Madrid.
Date: May 2021.
Area: 145m²
City: Madrid, Spain.
Exhibition Design: Marta Badiola and Mauro Gil-Fournier.
Botanical Art: María Eugenia Diego
Graphic Design: Jorge Pizarro
Content Photography: Francisco Pintón
Exhibition Photography: Luís Díaz Díaz
Production and Assembly: Viuda de Ramírez
Carpentry: Ademobe Ebanistas
Organizer: Madrid City Council. Government Area of Urban Development.
Collaborator: Municipal Nurseries of Madrid
Direction and Coordination: Metropolitan Forest: General Directorate of Strategic Planning.
Concept: Affective Architectures for the Metropolitan Forest.
This article was written by Elías Barczuk Pasamán. The translation is powered by AI.
