‘THE GIVING TREE’ | Shade LA Design Competition - Sustainability Award Recipient

Concept

“The Giving Tree” is a hyper-sustainable shade device designed to bridge the gap between the historic visual identity of Los Angeles and its climate-focused future. By repurposing Los Angeles’ palms and using every fiber of their existence, these structures exceed traditional sustainability benchmarks. The project addresses the immediate need for heat relief while ensuring that the vernacular legacy of the city’s iconic palm trees is not discarded, but transformed.

Rationale

The design utilizes the surplus of the 75,000 Mexican, California, and Canary Island palms that shed their fronds year-round. As reported in the LA Times, organizations like TreePeople advocate for the replacement of these palms with better climate adaptable species like sycamores and oaks. These climate enthusiasts demand smarter plants that capture pollution, reduce allergies, and encourage local wildlife; palms fail to fit in those categories. “The Giving Tree” leverages these trees as they are phased out of the LA urban landscape while addressing the city’s heat crisis.

The heat mitigation strategy relies on ancient vernacular craft techniques and intentional structural use: woven palm fronds to create ‘shade fans’ that provide protection, palm trunks as compressive, structural scaffolding, and braided wires for tensile strength. This choice of material turns a potential waste stream into a functional asset, providing an innovative, unseen solution to sustainability.

Beyond its physical properties, the project offers a reverent send-off to the trees that have defined the Los Angeles culture for over a century. By repurposing these giants to protect the public from