“Our lives unfold through an exchange of nutrients with plants, even if we only remember them when it is time to water them. In one way or another, they are there, allowing us to continue existing here on this planet. However, forty years after the television broadcast of the series Cosmos, it seems we still do not understand plants as a fundamental part of our lives. We continue to view them as a mere source of energy or a raw material to be exploited (capable of defining vast economic sectors); we instrumentalize them when asked to explain the origins of architecture, or we even use their color to tint our projects and ventures with labels like “green,” “ecological,” or “sustainable”; yet it is not common for us to think about them—and with them—when designing. Perhaps to begin settling that debt, in this issue of ARQ magazine, we are seeking essays, projects, and research that challenge the secondary role we have assigned to vegetation, or that demonstrate new ways of including vegetation in architecture, with the minimum condition of moving beyond the paradigm of the primitive hut, as we believe it is time to take a step beyond their mere allegorical instrumentalization.”
—Excerpt from the ARQ 108 call for submissions
