This emphasis on behaviour over appearance aligns Root Logics less with scientific biomaterials research than with material-led design and artistic practices that treat matter as active rather than inert. Seminal fibre artist and Bauhaus designer Anni Albers provides a critical reference point to our work through her 1937 essay ‘Work with Material’. She writes that to experience ‘the adventure of being close to the stuff the world is made of, design must embrace material in its original state and participate in processes of change. 1 Root Logics extends this position into living matter. Here, we are not only close to the stuff of which the designed world is made, but to the stuff the broader biological world is made by. Our insistence that roots as material are both collaborators and a design medium draws on a more systemic understanding of material ecologies and the agency of living matter in an entangled, finite contemporary world. This understanding of plant intelligence is echoed in contemporary writing on plant behaviour and bio-art practice. As science journalist Zoë Schlanger observes, plant intelligence is less a process of optimisation than persistence — ‘plant trying, plant testing, plant failing’— a liveliness grounded in continual adjustment rather than absolute mastery. 2 Contemporary bio-artists (including Dutch artist Diana Scherer, from whom this work takes inspiration and owes credit 3 ) frequently produce forms that are neither authored nor accidental but patiently arrived at. We aspire to this commitment to process over image, while extending it toward possible architectural application. Roots here are not symbols of ecology or illustrations of biological complexity; they are ecological processes unfolding in real time.
Connery + Tran
1 Albers, Anni. ‘Work with Material’. College Art Journal, vol. 3, no. 2 , 1944, pp. 51–54. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/772462. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026. 2 Schlanger, Zoë. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. Harper Perennial, 2025. p258 3 Scherer, Diana, and Giovanni Aloi. Interwoven: Exercises in Root System Domestication: Diana Scherer . Jap Sam Books, 2023.
48 on site review 48 :: building materials
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