The Land of Scattered Seeds investigates relationships between Man and Nature – the efforts of Man to control the natural world, and the cold indifference of Nature in response – and also between individuals as they attempt to find their own place in the modern city. Beginning with the desperation of two brothers, the inhabitants of a single street at the centre of Graz, Austria, incrementally convert their environment into a patchwork of farms, vineyards and gardens. Cottage industries spring up, and the inhabitants seek to maximize their yield through elaborate irrigation and fertilization schemes. The ambitions of each character lead to conflict and collaborations that evolve through the development of exquisite new constructions and the growth of plants. Nature – with ambitions of its own – constantly threatens to overwhelm them.

The work develops themes that consider the interaction between the main players in our environment – vegetal, mineral, animal and human – and the relationships between social, economic and ecological concerns. These issues are seen as being dynamically linked, with continual feedback between the latest moves of the characters, the plants, the structures and the wider environment. The project speculates an architecture that fuses constructed and grown ingredients with equal importance – each structure not only supports but is integrated with and driven by its associated plant life. In turn, the vegetation/architecture gradually changes the way in which the inhabitants live in the city.

The work ends with a number of different scenarios based on the lives of the characters, which project alternately the complete control of nature by man, the revenge of the environment, and finally a new dynamic symbiosis in the nature of the city. All the while, wild plants and birds continue to invade and so the struggles of Franz, Jorg, Olga, Florian and Lola continue…

Tags: narrative, neighbours, planning strategy