The Garden of Displaced Roots is a proposal for a temporary garden exhibition that uses the tension between the individual/collective and indigenous/migrant as an impetus for design speculation on weakness, at a more modest scale than the city and with a non-human subject — invasive plant species. In Canada, 486 invasive plant species exist, several of which were introduced during the colonisation period of the 1800s for ornamental purposes 4 — to create gardens. Ironically, it is the success of these plants flourishing in non-native environments that now makes them a threat. Simultaneously, several of these ‘alien’ plants have resided in Canada longer than Canada’s own formation in 1867, making them more Canadian than Canada. The Garden of Displaced Roots produces a living archive of twenty-two of the earliest invasive plant species to Canada that were intentionally introduced for their beauty.
Organised within a tensile portico structure, the project leverages a monumental archetype, 5 yet is formed as a light tensile veil. Each of these ‘invasive’ species hovers behind this transparent veil within an individual module, and are separated from the ground below where they could pose a threat. As these plants develop, their weight will pull them closer to the earth — the tension of the flexible portico structure aligning with the tension of the approaching species. This balancing act of tension is a negotiation of each individual unit and the whole, as the entire structural system is created from interconnected tensile members.
4 Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Invasive Alien Plants in Canada . CFIA. Ottawa, 2008. 5 Lincourt, Michel, ‘The Portico as an Architectural Archetype’ in In Search of Elegance: Towards an Architecture of Satisfaction . Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.
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Planting plan of the species, arranged chronologically to produce a threshold boundary.
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