The Orchid Necklace
Boston Botany Bay
Boston Botany Bay
Over the last few centuries botanists have collected plants with a purpose to create a greater diversity of botanical species for scientific research.
As botanical gardens have succeeded in creating a wonderful heterogeneity of orchids within the boundaries of these gardens, the variation of orchids world wide have dwindled. The result has caused the endangerment of a large number of orchid species.
By using the Harbor Islands as an in-situ research garden for orchids (native, exotic, and cultivars), the implementation of the diverse species can then establish as a network of botanical research, public programatic elements (public green houses, pool, harbor parks), while also initiating an ecological system which combines the botanical (orchids) with taxa (bee reintroduction).
Thus an orchid botanical park can be seen as beneficial for scientific research, economic stimulus, public interest, and the sensitive ecological systems within the region.
ABSTRACT:
The Boston Botany Bay studio researched the idea of re-defining the concept of the botanical garden for the 21st century. The archipelago of islands in the Boston Harbor became the field of experiment and a testing ground for new and stimulating ideas of how to celebrate, utilize and research the wonders of plants. Nature activation, instead of nature conservation, was the focus of the studio. Nature was to be considered the raw material; both a resource and a product of new bioengineered technologies, endless modifications and stimulating hybridizations between organic and inorganic matter. How can the botanic garden of the 21st century contribute towards new economical, environmental, aesthetic and scientific demand? Can the botanic garden, the metropolis of plants, become a pretext for future urbanization?
