Claude Cormier Projects: Lipstick Forest, artificial by not fake, Montréal, Québec, Canada [1 of 10] 

For Montréal’s new convention center, Cormier’s charge from city officials was to make the “building a little more feminine because it’s too masculine.” His initial idea was to populate the ground floor with trunks of trees recently felled in an ice storm, but that was rejected because the wood would rot and was infested with insects. He decided to create artificial tree trunks and rather than paint them brown, to mimic trees, they would be pink - an artificial but not fake forest. City officials were skeptical, but the building’s architects embraced it; and MAC Cosmetics provided underwriting. The project was completed in 1998 and today it is an icon. Cormier said that project gave him the confidence to be “out there” and “present” and not be ashamed of being a gay man creating “subversive landscapes.”