ZURICH.- To celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, Enea has embarked on projects to show how landscape design can confront the urgent challenge of climate change and teach ‘green skills’ to future generations.

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Enea, a global landscape architecture firm with offices in Zurich, New York, Miami and Milan, that began in 1973 as a small family business manufacturing and importing Italian terracotta and stone into Switzerland. Twenty years later the second generation of his Italian family to run the business, the landscape architect Enzo Enea grew up in gardens, which ignited his passion for the power and beauty of green space to enhance our world and wellbeing. This sensitivity to the natural world inspired Enea to train both as an engineer in Switzerland and a landscape architect in the UK, combining the art and science of gardening to grow Enea into a ‘one-stop-shop’ for landscape design with a strong environmental ethos. Today Enea employs over 240 employees, including a tree scout; the grounds of its HQ in Rapperswil-Jona outside Zurich are home to a nursery for mature trees, a pot gallery, carpentry workshops, a showroom and the world’s only Tree Museum.

Continuing the partnership with Art Basel from 2022, Swiss-Italian landscape architect Enzo Enea has designed Treetopia – a space for relaxation, discussion and contemplation of nature. This large-scale installation of trees and plants creates a forest of the future in the central Rundhof courtyard at the heart of the fair. Its message is simple: if we save trees, we can save ourselves by fighting climate change and creating a better, more sustainable world.

Open to all visitors at Art Basel, with free guided tours throughout the fair, Treetopia is an opportunity to encounter nature as a part of our busy daily life – not as a world apart – and, in the midst of discussions about art and value, to also consider the value of trees and green spaces both for people and our planet.

‘We have installed Treetopia in the Messe’s concrete courtyard to provide a vision of what could be, to show how green spaces can be integrated into even the most urban design and also to argue that it is crucial to save trees in order to save ourselves,’ says Enzo Enea. ‘Trees are a natural power source: they cool buildings and their surrounding microclimate by creating shade and moisture, prevent flooding, provide windbreaks, enhance soil, improve air quality, combat pollution and provide a haven of life for flora and fauna around them. As artists and the art world increasingly embrace sustainability and the natural world and consider how we want to live now, in an age of climate change, we hope Treetopia provides a space for reflection and discussion accessible to all fair visitors.’

Today, green spaces are disappearing at a rapid pace, especially within our urban environments, yet the nurturing of green spaces has never been more
vital. Treetopia showcases both resilient and future tree species and exhibits how certain plants can counteract the effects of climate change and the increased global warming affecting urban spaces. Through this curated combination of local tree specimens and ‘migrated’ tree species, the mixed forest landscape installation fills the circular courtyard of the Rundhof at the centre of Art Basel, creating a forest of the future at the heart of the fair. Here, visitors can relax and feel, see, and breathe the microclimate created beneath the tree canopy. Enea has collaborated with Paola Lenti to provide seating areas made of sustainable materials, where the cooling effect of the microclimate can be experienced.

Visitors to Art Basel may be surprised that, despite its Swiss location, the Rundhof courtyard’s forest of the future includes both Mediterranean and Alpine tree species. This is because as the climate continues to warm over the next 20 years – the growing time of a tree – Mediterranean plants will be more resilient to the higher temperatures and the ecosystem will change. All of these mature trees come from – and will be returned to – the Enea tree nursery and are not harmed in the transplanting process. Enea has used mature trees in Treetopia to express the importance of preserving them and the priceless value they provide, commenting: ‘When you cut down one old tree, you need to plant 2000 young trees to replace the life in that tree, the networks of flora and fauna it houses and its ability to process oxygen.’

Panel discussion: ‘From the Ground Up: Can Art and Design fight Climate Change?’, Wednesday, June 14, 4pm, followed by champagne reception, Enea Lounge at Messe Basel (2nd floor in hall 2). A conversation between landscape architect Enzo Enea, Viviane Stappmanns, of the Vitra Museum’s current exhibition ‘Garden Futures’ and artist Otobong Nkanga, whose multidisciplinary practice foregrounds ecological themes, moderated by Farah Nayeri, an author and culture writer for the New York Times. Due to limited space, RSVP essential.

Enea Landscape Architecture

Enea is an international landscape architecture and horticulture company, founded in 1973, with offices in Zurich, New York, Miami and Milan. Led by Enzo Enea, the second generation of his family to work in this field, the award-winning firm is known for preserving and designing with mature trees and is committed to creating sustainable landscape design that positively influences the local microclimates and counteracts the effects of climate change. The firm collaborates with leading international architects and creates landscapes on a range of scales, from private residences to hotels, real estate developments, parks and masterplans. Enea’s 240 employees include interdisciplinary professionals with expertise in landscape architecture, interior design, technical planning, engineering, construction and botany. Since 2010, Enea’s unique Tree Museum, which presents mature trees rescued from demolition alongside contemporary sculpture at its headquarters outside Zurich in Rapperswil-Jona, has demonstrated the Enea ethos of combining landscape, architecture, art and design in sustainable ways. The firm’s apprenticeship program and tree nursery cultivate the landscape professionals of the future with these values.

The Enea Tree Museum

Since the launch of his Tree Museum in 2010 – the only such museum in the world – Enzo Enea has continued to express his passion and respect for trees as unique representatives of nature and life. In the grounds of the museum at Enea headquarters in the lakeside town of Rapperswil, outside Zurich, he places trees and art on equal footing and brings them into a constant dialogue. This idyllic park is designed to offer time and space for contemplation. The outdoor sculptures chosen to complement the trees are intended to provoke thought about how we, as a society, treat the environment, animals and nature, and to prompt reflection on the consequences of unreflective expansion and consumerism. By presenting art by internationally renowned artists alongside the trees, Enea demonstrates that architecture, art and design are not only connected with nature, but often originate from it in form and diversity. Enea's aim is not to present staged perfection, but rather the chance encounters of natural forms.

The Enea Tree Museum grew out of Enea’s commitment to preserving and collecting trees. For more than 25 years, this landscape architect and tree specialist has been rescuing trees – even very mature ones – from construction sites and other areas where they are not wanted, preventing them from being felled and letting them take new roots in his open-air museum. He has pioneered a novel technique for transplanting even extremely large, old trees in order to save them from destruction. In this way, very different trees originating in our climate zone and close surroundings, including ancient, gnarled specimens marked by the environment and the weather, are given a new lease on life. On the extensive Tree Museum grounds, these specimens are displayed as works of natural art, to emphasize the importance of trees for humanity and the environment.

Art Basel

Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel, Art Basel, whose Global Lead Partner is UBS, today stages the world’s premier art shows for Modern and contemporary art, sited in Basel, Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Paris. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. Art Basel’s engagement has expanded beyond art fairs through new digital platforms and initiatives such as the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report and Intersections: The Art Basel Podcast. Art Basel’s Global Media Partner is The Financial Times.