Not sure what to make of this yet... When I walked into my room a couple weeks ago at TED Global, I looked out the window and saw across the street from Oxford's Keble College an assortment of huge tree stumps on giant pedestals.
Several people said, "Hey did you see the trees from Ghana?" So I finally skipped a session to check them out. Originally, they were on display in Trafalgar Square and originally originally they grew in Ghana's Suhum forest. See Ghost Forest Art Project: Installation of Rainforest Trees from the Tropics and read the statement by artist Angela Palmer.
What is strange to me is that while I share pro-forestation sentiments, I am also an architect and usually engage with woods like wawa, denya or dahoma in the Accra timber market (below) or trying to tame the mahogany tree in my too-small backyard with a crocodile machete. Strangely exotic to see these trees as exotic plants instead.
(my photographs; rendering via BBC)
