Dirty Conservatory: an ecomuseum of monstera deliciosa

22.1 barbican

Dirty Conservatory contaminates the existing social structures of the bourgeois Barbican. It does so by caring for, but also embodying, the parasitical and domestic plant species, monstera deliciosa. This is a functional, living and participatory ecomuseum.

Our Barbican site is spatially dominated by a concrete residential tower (prime London real estate). A concealed aspect of the site – the roots of the tower – is its mechanical plant room. It therefore became a diagrammatic imperative of the plan to grow towards and thus contaminate or infiltrate this spatialised inequity. Much like the parasitical monstera, which grows up vertical structures, this is an architecture that leans into and addresses the tall, stratified tower. It hypothetically collapses all floors, from penthouse to plant room, to the same communal room-of-plants level.

The architecture of Dirty Conservatory facilitates growth, pumping and delivering water, garchey waste and nutrients to plants, although ultimately their growth is always contingent on the destructive or caring hands of those who occupy the space. Museum and exhibit therefore become a kind of ecological and ethical litmus, baring scars or growth as witness to those who live and work at the Barbican. 

Michaela Prunotto