PATRICIA JOHANSONReturn to Timeline Biography

PARK FOR A RAINFOREST (1992) is a huge organic sculpture interwoven with the Amazon jungle. The project provides public access to every level of the rainforest. As ramps, seating, walkways, and viewing platforms thread through the trees up to the height of a fifteen-story building, the vertical garden is revealed with its unique communities of life at every level: orchids and butterflies, mazes of vines, chattering monkeys, bats, iguanas, tree-frogs, sloths, toucans, king vultures, and harpy eagles. The sculpture will not alter or destroy the existing ecosystem, but it will reveal the forest by focusing on the complexity and minutiae of nature, allowing scientific research, exploration, and discovery in a zone where humans and nature co-exist.