This Austrian football stadium is filled with trees

Swiss curator Klaus Littmann has turned a football stadium in southern Austria into a forest to make a point about climate change and deforestation.

The 32,000-capacity Wörthersee Stadium in Klagenfurt, capital of the province of Carinthia, is usually home to second-division club SK Austria Klagenfurt. But the team have moved temporarily to a nearby ground to make way for 300 trees on their pitch.

Littmann’s art installation, called “For Forest: The Unending Attraction of Nature”, urges visitors to imagine a future in which trees only exist inside designated areas like stadiums.

Inspiration for the exhibition came from the 1970s drawing by Austrian artist Max Peintner of spectators looking at trees; posing the question: What if the forest became nothing more than an item on display?

The trees, some of them fully grown and weighing up to 6 tonnes, were grown in nurseries and are species found in Central European forests like alder, aspen, birch and oak.

When For Forest closes in late October, the trees will be transplanted to a site nearby and the SK Austria Klagenfurt team will be back on their home turf.