FAO Forestry helps launch Living Chapel installation
05.06.2020
Nature is sending us a message that we must change our behaviour for a more sustainable future, FAO Forestry Assistant Director-General Hiroto Mitsugi said today at the launch of a new green artwork for World Environment Day.
Mitsugi was speaking at the unveiling of the Living Chapel, a vertical garden installation at Sapienza University of Rome’s Botanical Garden.“We are now living in exceptional times,” Mitsugi said. “The world today is facing a climate crisis, a biodiversity loss crisis and a health crisis.
“We need to change our behavior and build back better for a more sustainable future for people, and for the planet.”
The Living Chapel brings together art, nature, biodiversity and music, and aims to inspire ‘acts of ecological restoration’ across the world, according to its creators.
Inspired by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Pope Francis’s 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato si’, the work is supported by FAO, the Mountain Partnership and UNEP, among others.
The installation provides a temporary home to 2 500 saplings of 46 tree species from Central and Southern Europe, as well as a collection of ancient fruit trees native to Italy’s Umbria region planted in recycled oil barrels.
The chapel is constructed entirely from recyclable and repurposed materials, and has a solar-powered, closed-cycle irrigation system that waters the plants while creating a musical harmony as drops of water hit the steel drums.
At the end of the summer, the seedlings nurtured by the Living Chapel will be distributed throughout Italy to restore degraded lands and create new gardens.
The work was created by Australian-Canadian music composer Julian Darius Revie with support from a team of over 100 students, architectural designer Gillean Denny, the Stuckeman School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and the Department of Welding and Metal Fabrication at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. An Italian team led by landscape architect Consuelo Fabriani carried out the plant selection and assembly.
Mitsugi congratulated the team on being able to bring the chapel to life during challenging times.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, and Iyad Abu Moghli, Principal Coordinator, UNEP Faith for Earth Initiative, also spoke at today’s launch, which was streamed on Facebook.
The Living Chapel is now on view to the public at Rome’s Botanical Gardens, which reopened on 27 May after a period of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The installation will be transported to FAO Headquarters in Rome for the 25th session of the Committee on Forestry.
News from FAO Forestry
Photo from The Living Chapel
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