Soccer stadium pitch becomes 300-tree forest - ESPN

6:07 AM ET

An Austrian soccer club has temporarily moved out of its 32,000-capacity stadium so that a forest of 300 trees can be planted on the field.

Swiss artist Klaus Littmann has installed the exhibit entitled "For Forest: The Unending Attraction of Nature" on the pitch at Klagenfurt's Woerthersee Stadion to make an environmental point.

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"For many, because of the current situation, this represents a memorial as part of the climate change discussion," he told Reuters at the exhibition in the lakeside city in southern Austria, near the border of Italy and Slovenia.

The Basel-based artist cited the influence of a drawing by the artist Max Peintner "who in 1970 had the vision that one day, it could happen that we look at nature in designated areas only, for example in a crater architecture such as a stadium."

The exhibition, which opens to the public next week, has temporarily displaced Austria Klagenfurt, the second-tier team who usually call the Woethersee home.

They will play at a smaller ground nearby until the For Forest piece is removed in late October.

Information from Reuters was used in this report