Artist transforms football stadium into lush forest to highlight deforestation dangers
A football stadium in Klagenfurt has been turned into Austria's biggest open-air art installation, as commentary on the effects of climate change.
Hundreds of trees have been planted in the middle of Wörthersee Football Stadium in Klagenfurt, Austria, transforming it into a magnificent forest.
It was the vision of artist and curator Klaus Littmann, who hoped to draw attention to climate change and deforestation.
The project – named 'The Unending Attraction of Nature' - was inspired by a drawing from 1970 by Max Peintner of the same name, which shows people watching a forest like a football game in a stadium.
Mr Littman said he twisted Mr Peintner's dystopian vision into a modern statement to 'put it in a new context'.
“Maybe one day we will have only the chance to see nature in a space like this – in a stadium; so that what we do already with animals in a zoo,” he said.
“We take something from daily life and put it in a new context. And that means that when people come in here – that's what I think will happen – that they will have a completely new view of that what they see."