Hun Lee

Shared Ground, Shared Tree is a site-specific installation that embodies how relationships with trees can be reconfigured beyond extractive perspectives. The project brings together two trees from The Hague in different states: a living pear tree in the back courtyard of the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), and a poplar tree cut down by the city’s tree management system, appearing in the installation as a series of benches. Around the pear tree, 25m² of pavement is removed to reveal the ground beneath—the growing space proposed for a single city tree. Entering this intervening space, visitors are invited to sit on the benches situated between the living tree and the felled tree.

In design, trees often appear after they have been processed into wood; as material, resource, or commodity. As an industrial designer, I wanted to find a way to relate to trees beyond commodification, so the project departed from personal questions: How did I become ‘industrialised’? How did this affect my relationship with trees? 

These questions became clearer as I cared for a small pear tree in the KABK courtyard. Even though the tree was physically present, it was easy to pass by without really noticing. Through acts of care such as watering, adding soil, planting wildflower seeds, and observing its response, I began to view the tree not as mere material, but as the living entity it is, with which I coexist. I wanted this relationship to move beyond an individual act of care, and to ask how a reciprocal relationship with trees can emerge within the urban landscape. 

A conversation with Martina van der Vegt, who works in the Urban Management Department of the municipality of The Hague, became an important turning point in the research. I learned that city trees are managed through systems that prioritise safety, maintenance, and the practical needs of public space. These systems can reduce trees to measurable values, but they can also make trees visible, protected, and cared for. I approached this administrative framework as a research method for understanding the conditions that shape how trees in The Hague are valued, later reinterpreting its language into visual elements of the project. 

Shared Ground, Shared Tree grows out of this ambivalence. Rather than resolving the contradictions between care, management, and use, the project brings them onto the same ground. Sitting on a poplar bench within the pear tree’s growing space brings together life and wood, protection and control. The benches are functional objects, yet they still carry the form, weight, and traces of the trees they came from. In this shared ground, coexistence becomes a physical relation: entering the tree’s space, sitting with it, and recognising its presence. Here, design becomes a way of encountering these trees again as trees, reconnecting the overlooked pear tree and the cut poplar with their histories, conditions, presence, and agency. From within this industrialised urban landscape, the project creates the conditions for our already entangled relationships with trees to become more visible and more central in public space.