A second-tier side from the Austrian football league, SK Austria Klagenfurt, have temporarily left their home ground in an effort to create a forest on the pitch. Yes, you read that correctly. The 32,000-seater Wörthersee Stadion, which hosted some games of the 2008 Euros, will now have more than 300 trees inside the arena thanks to Swiss artist Klaus Littmann, who proposed the idea on an exhibit named “For Forest: The Unending Attraction of Nature” in Klagenfurt’s stadium to raise awareness on climate change.
In an interview with the Reuters, the Swiss artist said, “For many, because of the current situation, this represents a memorial as part of the climate change discussion.”
An Austrian artist, Max Peintner who also happened to be an architect created a pencil drawing of a forest in the middle of a stadium surrounded by a crowd back in 1970. And Littmann, claims that his project was influenced from that drawing itself.
” In 1970, he had the vision that one day, it could happen that we look at nature in designated areas only, for example in a crater architecture such as a stadium.” he added.
The exhibition is scheduled to open for public next week and has generated much curiosity among the people of Klagenfurt, the lakeside city in southern Austria.
Meanwhile, SK Klagenfurt will be forced to play in a smaller stadium nearby until the For Forest exhibition ends on Oct. 27.
[Credits IG/brfootball]
