Project3 -- Plants
The third project focuses on the relationship between plants and humans.
I chose to position plants as the final chapter because, in my view, they are among the most powerful forms of life, despite how rarely this is acknowledged. Through this project, I aim to reveal the nature of our relationship with plants — how we are gradually constrained, exploited, and ultimately consumed by them, often without even noticing.Within modern scientific discourse, plants are typically framed as passive, silent, and without agency. Viewed through an anthropocentric lens, they are classified, controlled, and transformed into manageable landscapes. They survive through silence. Meanwhile, we continue to construct our environments, overlooking the plants that persist in cracks and margins. We appear to make space for them, yet this space ultimately serves human needs.
Contemporary plants have largely lost the reckless vitality of wild growth. They endure in silence, and it is precisely this silence that enables human behaviour to become increasingly unchecked. As one statement suggests:
“One of the fundamental tendencies of the human mind, in pursuing its own desires and conveniences,
is to simplify the wildness and diversity of nature.
The incomprehensible complexity of nature is reduced to something manageable.”
Taking plant domestication as a point of departure, this project reconsiders how humans define, restrict, and manage plant life. At the same time, it asks how plants, in return, shape human existence in slower, quieter, yet more profound ways.
Plants sense the world
Plants also have their own ways of sensing the world — sight, hearing, smell, touch, and proprioception. I see them not just as living organisms, but as beings that can, in some ways, be even more capable than humans.
The three posters I created below reflect how I experienced plants while working on this project: layered, colour-shifting forms that appear almost transparent, yet hold a quiet sense of power. Each carries a silent cry, creating a feeling of distance — something you sense, but hesitate to approach. The visuals are inspired by the original forms and limited colour palettes of pigweed, cacti, and orchids. Their quiet presence gives the images a slightly unreal quality. This is intentional — away of expressing what I imagine to be their inner state.
Entry Point: Grafting, Skin, and Regenerative Structures
This project begins with the way humans reshape plants through grafting — combining, controlling, and reconstructing growth to suit our needs. Through this process, plants become something both natural and constructed, existing between autonomy and intervention. This logic extends beyond plants. The layered structure of human skin reveals a similar condition: beneath protective surfaces lie tissues capable of regeneration. Early skin grafting methods mirror plant grafting, where growth emerges through contact, connection, and the merging of separate bodies.
Silhouette and Body Behaviour Studies
Based on an analysis of growth patterns in both plants and human skin, the project develops garment silhouettes that follow directions of expansion, layering, and connection. This leads to a series of form and behaviour experiments, where the idea of grafting is translated onto the human body. By “grafting” different parts of the body together, distorted and unfamiliar bodily configurations emerge. These altered forms are then reinterpreted through clothing, shaping silhouettes that reflect tension, merging, and misalignment — where the body is no longer a fixed structure, but something that can be recombined and continuously redefined.
Material and Modular Experiments
This part of the project focuses on material experimentation using bio-based materials and a modular interlocking system.
Inspired by grafting — the processes of cutting and joining in plant systems — this methodology is translated into the design of interlocking units. Through insertion, deformation, and recombination, the modules generate flexible and evolving forms. Datura is chosen as a key reference. As a toxic plant, its morphology aligns with the project’s underlying tension. Its organic, expanding geometry informs the transformation of each module, allowing the system to develop both three-dimensional structures and flattened pieces that can conform more closely to the surface of the body.
Bio-material Colour Experiments
In addition to Datura, a wide range of natural pigments were explored through plant-based sources such as herbal medicines, flower teas, and other botanicals with functional properties. These materials were extracted and incorporated into different bio-based recipes, including gelatin-based, agar-based, and starch-based formulations.
Through this process, variations in colour, translucency, and texture emerged. Interestingly, even when using the same species and methods, the resulting colours often differed. This unpredictability became an important part of the experiment, leading to a broad range of colour outcomes and pattern variations.
Digital Modelling and Final Outcome
The final garments were developed and visualised using CLO3D. During the simulation process, areas of penetration revealed limitations in fit and comfort. The rigid modular structure, while effective in generating form, did not fully conform to the curvature of the body. To address this, more flexible connections were introduced in areas requiring movement. Narrow, adjustable strips were developed using bio-based materials and constructed through weaving and knitting techniques. These softer structures allowed the garments to better adapt to the body while maintaining the overall system of modular growth. This combination of rigid modules and flexible connections led to the final outcome.
- As human society continues to push forward in its own development, everything still unfolds within a system that is slower, yet far larger.
We have never truly separated from nature — we have simply not realised that we are already within it. -
Fiinal Rendering