Non-Garden

Studio MA of Moria Architects
Yael Moria, Yael C. Agmon, Adi Levi-Trau, Amir Lotan, Alaa Shulhut

Together with: Yossi Katzav,Jordan Licht
Sound Artist: Nir Jacob Younessi

The non-garden is a new cultural product, super-modern, that thrives in new living conditions of high urban density and constant extinction of natural nature at all scales. Its character derives not from the specificity of its location but from its global genericism, and the growing ambition to look instagrammably good all the time, with zero effort and at a low cost. It does not belong anywhere but exists everywhere, it’s very familiar yet simultaneously alienated.
The aesthetics of the non-garden repeatedly moves between indulgence and survival - it is formed through the integration of all those organic and artificial materials which survived the climatic and cultural changes of our time. The non-garden redefines natural aesthetics in cultural context as some kind of artificial fertilisation. It does not symbolise the victory of nature over culture or vice versa, but the synthesis of them - which is the source of its strength. The non-garden manifests resilience, a Beta version of the future garden.

A vast selection of seeds collected from all across Israel is returned to the garden using advanced spraying technology. Each seed carries a unique genetic payload from a specific location, a specific culture, a specific climate—a collection of species infiltrating each other's spaces and forming an intricate rhizomatic web of complex communication. The sprayed seeds create a new, hybrid landscape: simultaneously natural and artificial, local and foreign, authentic and fake, organized without hierarchy, multicultural and homogeneous. A non-garden. The meticulous arrangement of seeds collected over years and preserved in the central seed bank is a clear expression of the human rationalization of nature. In this project, an entire botanical collection is pushed into a pressurized industrial container and sprayed every which way as a uniform fluorescent paste, a mush of culture and nature. -
The geographic location of the non-garden affects its appearance and ability to survive: the change in temperatures alters the materials, the wind moves the particles in the air, and humidity attracts fungi and insects. Weather and time are dynamic and unexpected parameters that affect every object and living creature that exists in this space. Temperature, wind, humidity, light and time are the modulators of the sound which create a sonar image of the space, corresponding to space and time.