Everlite Grove

For LionTree's annual retreat in the Utah mountains, the brief was an environment that would bring people together after dark — not a screen to look at, but a place to be inside.

A grove. Roughly sixty fabricated birch trees with light living inside them, planted among some forty real birches, ringed by twelve illuminated halos — an environment where the boundary between the built and the grown dissolves at night.

I led the project from concept through delivery: the design, the fabrication program, installation, live operation, and the strike when it was over.

The fabricated trees were built in fiberglass with integrated LEDs, then choreographed together with the light rings into slow animation sequences, scored with roughly twelve minutes of original sound composed for the space. The technology was tuned to disappear — what guests experienced was a forest that breathed.

Around a hundred trees in total, standing for a single week in the snow. The grove struck a chord — its core idea and physical components went on to become the foundation for The Secret Garden the following year.