Botanical Architecture

Plants, Buildings and Us

Paul Dobraszczyk

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781789149272
• eBook ISBN: 9781789149647
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Vegetal Architecture
• 1 Seeds
• 2 Roots
• 3 Trunks
• 4 Branches
• 5 Leaves
• 6 Flowers
• 7 Canopies
• References
• Further Reading
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index