PROJECT CONTEXT
Transmitting - Designing for Eco-literacy/Biophilia
Emily Carr’s new campus is an example of human intervention with limited regard for existing living systems on its footprint. This is mirrored in the landscape/architectural/design decisions of the campus, ‘blank’ concrete walls and monoculture landscapes. Though desolate, in time competing organisms will present themselves (bacteria/birds/seeds/plants/insects), phenomenon will make itself known (rain, wind, clouds, sun/heat, the view). Often designers are tasked with ‘solving’ and ‘controlling’ these differences between built expectations and the unpredictable dynamics of reality. This project aims not to control but to support the new relationships that are forming.
PROBLEM SPACE
Emily Carr's new campus lacks green space and falls short in the inspirational department. It's a proven fact that green spaces and plants are highly beneficial for humans and they've even been shown to help improve students performance when made a part of their daily environments. For an institution that puts such a high focus on sustainable design, it only makes sense that we are surrounded by nature and inspired by biomimicry.
From the outset of this project, I surveyed the school's campus to find opportunities to inject green space. It was immediately clear how badly we needed a project like this to be implemented on campus.
There were so many opportunities to create living green walls on campus, to design a space that breathed and uplifted the community during long, rainy winters. Perhaps a plant library in the actual library, or a greenhouse type design in the south-east stairwell, which gets so much sun and gets very hot as a result? There were so many possibilities that came to my mind as I investigated all the nooks and crannies.
INSPIRATION
As a design university, we have so much talent and vision at our disposal. There's such an opportunity to initiate green projects within our curriculums, engaging students from all disciplines, from industrial design to sculpture.
So much opportunity, yet my power to impact such grandiose change in such a short period of time was limited.
GUERILLA GREEN
Enter Guerilla Green. I was looking for a small, but meaningful way to engage the Emily Carr community in making their campus a greener and healthier space and sparking this needed discussion. I decided to set up a Guerilla Pop-up Plant Propagation for a few days on found desk space, in a third-floor hallway. I purchased two healthy, full plants (Heart-leafed Philodendrons) which were easiest to propagate and could be rooted and grown indefinitely in water or chosen to be potted eventually. Ease of access and making the process as simple as possible was necessary for adoption here. I provided recycled and cleaned attractive jars, participation instructions, scissor for cuttings, some reading material on the backstory of the project and a guestbook to hear more about peoples thoughts and ideas for green.
Since this project was executed fairly quickly, and in true guerilla fashion, without permission, I wanted the branding to have a quick, hand-made feel. Here today, gone tomorrow. Everything about it was designed to be impermanent. I found a recycled cardboard box, which I used to tape my sheets of paper to, giving it more durability and the ability to be picked up by many hands without causing the artifacts damage. I created a quick illustrative sketch of a pothos plant, which ended up being my project's logo. I used illustrator to paint over an image of the plant I found online. The logo was versatile and able to be flipped around to suit the application.
RESULTS
The project was a success! I started with about 17 empty bottles and only 3 were left behind, but even those had cuttings in them someone had made. Who knows how many others used their own vessels as suggested. It was really rewarding to stroll the hallways and see people carrying their new plant baby, or notice cuttings on someones desk. I was surprised so much of the mother plants remained in the end, which means people showed a great deal of respect for the project and the plants. The leftover plants now sit on my studio desk in the ComD area and I hope to keep giving away plant cuttings. Anyone who stops by and comments is welcome to a cutting, just bring a jar or bottle of some sort! Hopefully there will continue to be more green initiatives and the community keeps infiltrating the campus with greens in the true Guerilla Green fashion.
FEEDBACK
After executing the project I received some valuable feedback from my peers! Moving forward I would definitely reduce the amount of text I included in the project or at least work to include more imagery and perhaps picture instructions, but at the same time, I think half the charm of this project is not telling someone exactly how to engage them, but rather giving them some guidance and seeing what they come up with! Overall it looks like it accomplished what I was looking to accomplish, to spark an interest and a beginning touch point for questioning our built campus environment and hopefully I can continue to give out cuttings, as I've left the plants on my studio desk.
