Sanctum of 10,000 Trees: This Meditative Grotto Immerses Visitors in Natural History

The artist Katie Paterson has teamed up with the architects Zeller & Moye to create a truly immersive public artwork that tells the story of our planet’s history through the traces left behind on ancient wood. If you’re a fan or art, natural history or even just the planet Earth itself, you’ve got to check this out!

Located on the grounds of the historic Fort Royal Gardens in Bristol, UK, “Hollow” is a meditative grotto built from wood samples of over 10,000 arboreal species whose stories span millions of years. From petrified wood fossils that date to the Earth’s earliest forests over 390 million years ago to samples from newly discovered species, “Hollow” runs the gamut of natural history in representing humanity’s favorite building material.

The exterior of “Hollow” is made of fresh Douglas fir posts. Their varying heights represent the differing heights of trees, from modest to monumental.

The artist and her team spent over three years collecting samples from around the world to construct their wooden sanctum. Samples represented in the artwork include an Indian Banyan tree under which Buddha is said to have achieved Enlightenment and a Japanese gingko tree that survived the devastating attack in Hiroshima.

The staggered peaks of the entranceway represent the spontaneous beauty of the natural world.

“Some samples are incredibly rare — fossils of unfathomable age, and fantastical trees such as Cedar of Lebanon, the Phoenix Palm and the Methuselah tree thought to be one of the oldest trees in the world at 4,847 years of age,” explains Katie Paterson. “Also, a railroad tie taken from the Panama Canal railway, which claimed the lives of between 5,000 to 10,000 workers over its 50-year construction, and wood salvaged from the remnants of the iconic Atlantic City boardwalk devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.”

The interior of the grotto features thousands of tree samples, some dating back hundreds of millions of years.

Inside the grotto, scintillating rays of sunlight break through the checkered canopy, lending the space an almost religious sense of calm. The experience of natural history one gains here is aesthetic, bordering on the spiritual: The visitor is surrounded by the texture of time itself.

“The ‘Hollow’ interior is an introverted and meditative space where, whether sitting or standing, one finds oneself embraced by history,” said architects Christoph Zeller and Ingrid Moye. “Our design conjoins thousands of wooden blocks of differing sizes to form one immense cosmos of wood producing textures, apertures and stalactites. Openings in the vaulted top let in just enough natural light to create the dappled light effect of a forest canopy.”

“Hollow” is an immersive, interactive space, which encourages visitors to reflect on the relationship between human beings and the natural environment.

The exhibition opens in conjunction with the University of Bristol’s new Life Sciences Building. Nearby “Hollow” is a digital treebank, where visitors are invited to share their memories of the exhibit and reflect on the innumerable ways our lives intersect with those of trees.

All images by Max McClure; courtesy of the University of Bristol and Situations