60 Minute Man

is an architectonic installation by Finnish architects Casagrande & Rintala for the Venice Biennale 2000. In the work Casagrande & Rintala had planted an oak forest into an abandoned barge on top of 60 minutes worth of biologically cleaned and composted human waste from the city of Venice.

They said:

We got the invitation to participate in the Venice Biennale 2000. The director of the Biennale architect Massimilliano Fuksas wanted us to realize an architectural installation commenting on the theme of the exhibition: Citta Less Aesthetics, More Ethics.What we wanted was to have an industrial ship and plant a forest inside. Then sail with this ship from Finland to Venice. Our biologist frieds told us that the vegetation would die somewhere around the Biskaya Bay, the climate change would bee too big. "Trees don´t sail"."We ended up in North-Italy with a van with our mobile working crew and started to look after a ship. Eventually we found a barge in the port of Chioggia, some 50 km south of Venice. The barge "Topogigio" was abandoned and filled with dirt and water. We could work with this.

All the materials are recycled or borrowed. Even the trees.This is a temporary collage of material streams.

Big reward after 7 weeks of work was to sail with the forest and open it up as a public park in Venice.