The Future Home: Innovative Design for Human and Plant Cohabitation: Terrarium #4 (a bute)

Statement

We are a design lab based in Joshua Tree, California. Our purpose is to:
1) Look at plants as technology but from a human and creative perspective
2) Pursue the potential many plant species have for removing toxins and adding moisture to the breathing zones in our homes, offices, clinical spaces, and commercial spaces.
3) Encourage the co-habitation of plants and humans.
4) Increase the appeal of incorporating plants into our living spaces by applying good, sustainable design principles to existing methods of keeping houseplants.
5) Personalize the breathing zones of individuals based on their environmental health concerns such as benzene or formaldehyde exposure.
6) Re-imagine the kitchen’s tea cupboard and spice rack as a living resource.
7) Re-imagine the bathroom’s medicine cabinet as a living resource offering safer, lasting, fresher, and more holistic alternatives to many of the commercial items that are conventionally stocked in medicine cabinets at home.
8) Critically engage the ways in which plants can be used for aesthetic purposes in interior design.

In this pursuit we are currently developing the following design lines:
“Sustainable Air Filtration”
“Sustainable Humidity Maintenance”
“Living Medical Resource”
“Living Kitchen Resource”
“Built-In and Mobile Terrarium Installations”
“Interior Desert-scaping”

Friday, March 28, 2008

Terrarium #4 (a bute)

Our most recent terrarium is especially beautiful. We were lucky enough to come upon two circular glass containers (via our friend Meghan, Thanks!), one of them on a stem and the other a flat bottom container. In this Terrarium there is:
- bottom jar
1) 4" of gravel
2) 2" coconut substrate
3) 2" composted topsoil
4) moss layer
5) heart leaf philadondron
-top jar
1) 1" gravel
2) 2" coconut substrate
3) 2" composted topsoil
4) moss layer
5) croton plant
6) spider plant clippings (on their way, not pictured)

This terrarium works especially well because the bottom glass container is totally enclosed with the top one resting on it, making getting the clean air out a matter only of lifting the top jar off for a moment. And it still allows the plants to water and maintain themselves. The top glass container is opened but the croton we chose to go into it has leaves that create an almost perfect seal, leaving only the area around its stem for air to move out.