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Denver: The Urban Forest Project

During two weeks in mid-October Denver hosted its own Urban Forest Project. The Urban Forest Project was conceived by Worldstudio in conjunction with AIGA NY and Times Square Alliance. The original event brought together 185 designers from 21 countries to create an outdoor design exhibition throughout the Times Square in New York City. Each designer began with the form, idea, or character of a tree and was asked to explore an issue they thought was pressing or an idea they found entertaining or intriguing. Each design was turned into a banner and hung in Times Square from September through November 2006. The project was praised as a success and was covered in the New York Times, Business Week, and ABC News among others.

The Denver project used the same project brief and feature 48 banners created by local designers and students. Twenty-four professional designers were invited and paired up with twenty-four students enrolled in different colleges from the Denver area. Each team created two banners to be displayed together during the exhibition. The banners hung on California Street between 14th Street and the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver. California Street is a main corridor linking the convention center to the 16th Street Mall. The banners were hung on October 7th through October 20th, allowing them to be seen by attendees of Next: AIGA Design Conference 2007.

The banners were donated by Banner Creations, a Minneapolis based banner production company, and were constructed from a unique fabric called Ecophab. Ecophab is made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. After the banners hung they were made into tote bags and sold as a fundraiser for design education initiatives. From the sale of the bags, we were able to raise over $2,500. By using recycled fabric and repurposing the banners into bags, the project will have a very minimal environmental footprint.