The Architecture of Trees

all photos by Hannah Barefoot

“Trees appear to be too complicated if we don’t have the key. I will give you the key to trees,” Francis Hallé

Renowned botanists, Francis Hallé and Peter Del Tredici, came to the University of Virginia (UVA) to teach landscape architecture students about the architecture of trees. Hallé is a professor emeritus at the University of Montpellier II, where he studies tropical rainforests. UVA landscape architecture chair Teresa Gali-Izard, International ASLA, introduced him as a botanist, biologist, artist, and poet. Del Tredici is a botanist and research scientist at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. His research includes wild urban plants and plant morphology.

As the first workshop on Saturday afternoon began, Hallé defined plant architecture through 22 known models of tree growth and morphology. We learned how certain logic plays out in the growth of a tree. The…