Sunday Escape - Design Christmas tree

Even architects and designers have a heart. And celebrate December 25 preparing the Christmas tree. Sure, they do it in their own way. So forget the classic fir tree decorated with baubles and trinkets as Santa Claus, Frosty, angels, reindeer, snowflakes, toy soldiers or elves. They go on much more conceptual solutions and almost always less romantic. For example Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the bright pavilion stands in the courtyard dell'Utzon Center in Denmark, Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson have recreated an enchanted forest at Claridge's Hotel in London, while always in English Alex Chinneck capital has trapped tree into a giant ice cube. So for our section Sunday Escape Holyday Special we show a virtual journey through five of the most interesting Christmas trees made up of designers and architects in recent years.

"Turning the Christmas Tree Inside-Out" by SOM
 

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) innovate the classic Christmas tree turning it into a special installation. The architectural firm produces at the Utzon Center in Aalborg in Denmark a temporary lattice sculpture 7 meters high, consists of 1000 modules by Peter Lassen's grid system, which evokes the shape of an inverted fir and lights up at night. In addition, the openings in the base allow visitors to enter and access to a space for reflection. Here the project told in the words of SOM: “The design creates a tree-shaped social space inside a three-dimensional grid of wireframe boxes, inverting the traditional experience of assembling around the Christmas tree. By using a pure structural grid to create an intimate and festive space, the project demonstrates the ways in which architecture can facilitate social interaction”.

Christmas Forest at Claridge Hotel

The Claridge's Hotel, one of the fine hotels in London, set in exclusive Mayfair, every year entrusts the creation of a special Christmas tree to famous fashion and design personalities such as John Galliano or Burberry's Christopher Bailey. This time it is the turn of Jonathan Ive, Apple's Design Manager, and industrial designer Marc Newson. The duo decided to do things in a big way so transformed the hotel lobby in a magical forest that unites technologists and natural elements. Snowy Scots pine and real logs are mixed with a backdrop of digital birches, calls of owls and foxes with lights, leading to a single spruce symbol of the future and give visitors a magical experience, enchanting.

Alex Chinneck's Christmas tree inside gigantic ice cube

Never thought to trap the Christmas tree into a giant block of ice? No? Well, the English artist Alex Chinneck froze a pine tree in a two-ton resin cube, surrounding by a wax puddle, thus recreating a very convincing "iceberg" effect. 7 meters high and decorated with 1,200 lights this surreal project will be open until January 6, 2017.

Christmas tree made from sledges

In 2013 Budapest hosted in front of the Palace of Arts a spectacular 11-meter high Christmas tree made with 365 wooden sleds (once dismantled given away to poor children of SOS Children's Village) and created by the multidisciplinary Hello Wood study. Top view installation looked like a giant snowflake.

Upside down Christmas tree at Tate Britain

December 2, the Tate Britain opened the holiday season with a Christmas Tree completely unique, hung upside down from the and with the roots covered with gold leaf created by the Iranian Shirazeh Houshiary. The project takes up the idea of a work realized by the man twenty years ago.