Installation, 2026
Shanghai, China
Yokohama, Japan
Design: ZHANG Jie
Built with 四叶草堂, LIU Siteng
Shanghai International Flower Festival
Finalist, Yokohama Street Furniture Competition
The proposal reached the final round of the competition but remained unbuilt. (https://streetfurniture.jp/result.html) Three months later, the project was reactivated and realized in Shanghai, where it was translated into a new urban and material context.
The large circular structure functions simultaneously as a table, a bench, and a writable blackboard. Across its surface, openings of varying sizes are fitted with standardized planting containers. These removable containers are planted with houseplants—plants that require minimal maintenance and infrequent watering.
In Shanghai, the project was reconfigured into a 5-square-meter modular garden system. To adapt the original proposal into a more mobile and sustainable form capable of circulating within different communities, the design was reinterpreted as an assemblage of square and rectangular modules, forming a compact yet flexible structure.
The installation was first presented at West Bund Riverside Park, before being relocated into nearby residential neighborhoods, allowing the garden to continue circulating and integrating into everyday community life.
In the conceptual proposal in Yokohama, contributors are invited to write directly on the blackboard surface, sharing notes about each plant’s personality, age, or small personal stories associated with it. Visitors can then add their own words, respond to existing notes, and freely engage in conversations sparked by these small plants, which quietly represent fragments of someone else’s everyday life.
In the conceptual proposal in Yokohama, the structure measures 3.5 meters in diameter and 0.45 meters in height, and is constructed with a wooden frame finished in blackboard paint.
After the Yokohama competition, I collaborated with 四叶草堂 to realize the project as part of a sub-program within the Shanghai International Flower Festival. In the Shanghai version, the garden was conceived as a mobile system circulating between different communities. To support this logic of mobility, the original circular structure was reconfigured into a series of modular units, forming a 1.2 m × 4.8 m rectangular system.
On the blackboard surface, people exchange experiences and feelings about caring for household plants, asking and answering questions, or identifying species they may have once grown themselves. What distinguishes this project from a purely scenic or ornamental garden is its attempt to bring people closer to plants through a light and playful approach. Beyond simply observing, visitors are able to casually acquire knowledge about plants through interaction, conversation, and shared experience.
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