Groundswell Architects: "From Forest to Furniture exhibit"

New Projects: "From Forest to Furniture" Exhibit at Shelburne Farms


			Program Overview Children who visit Shelburne Farms for field trips, pre-school programs, summer camps and vacation day programs spend time in the Farms’ forests learning about the importance of forestry in their lives. In the summer of 2006 the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington, Vermont invited Shelburne Farms to be part of their “Who Lives in Trees?” exhibit. Design Features The vertical 6-sided tree trunk shows the bark, the rough sawn and finished wood of six species common to Vermont: Ash, Black Cherry, Butternut, Maple, Pine, and Red Oak. All the wood was harvested at Shelburne Farms. The bottom of the trunk flares out into activity benches for kids’ activities: taking the logging truck to the sawmill; assembling forest animal benches; sanding; sawing logs; solving tree identification puzzles. The tree has a sixteen-foot diameter canopy of fifty oversized leaves – scans of real leaves.