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Botanical Architecture

Plants, Buildings and Us

An original call to reorient architecture around our relationship to plants.
 
When we look at trees, we see a form of natural architecture, and yet we have seemingly always exploited trees to make new buildings of our own. Whereas a tree creates its own structure, humans generally destroy other things to build, with increasingly disastrous consequences. In Botanical Architecture, Paul Dobraszczyk looks closely at how elements of plants—seeds, roots, trunks, branches, leaves, flowers, and canopies—compare with and constitute human-made buildings.
 
Given the omnipresence of plant life in and around our structures, Dobraszczyk argues that we ought to build as much for plants as for ourselves, understanding that our lives are always totally dependent on theirs. Botanical Architecture offers a provocative and original take on the relationship between ecology and architecture.

280 pages | 20 color plates, 89 halftones | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2024

Architecture: Architecture--Criticism

History: Environmental History


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Reviews

"An impressive, compendious book with a great deal to offer the architecture lover and the plant lover alike, including much that will surprise."

Literary Review

“Plants are architects! This is what, with admirable lucidity, Paul Dobraszczyk claims in his new book. Focusing by turns on seeds, roots, trunks, branches, leaves, flowers, canopies, and vegetal communities that include all living beings, Botanical Architecture is a tour d'imagination of thinking with plants.”

Michael Marder, author of "Time Is a Plant"

“With Botanical Architecture, Paul Dobraszczyk shows that many architects have been learning not from Las Vegas but from vegetation—and that the lessons of plant life are endless. From ancient forest homes to medieval floral ornament, from modern green roofs to oxygen gardens in space, Dobraszczyk’s book is a deep-rooted and exciting compendium.”

Geoff Manaugh, "New York Times"–bestselling author of "A Burglar’s Guide to the City"

“In this fascinating and wide-ranging book Paul Dobraszczyk takes us on a journey through the intersecting realms of botany and architecture. Botanical Architecture is set to be a pivotal contribution to what we might term the 'vegetal turn' that is now spreading across multiple disciplinary fields ranging from art history to materials science.”

Matthew Gandy, University of Cambridge

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