The most important plant family on Earth is the one you mow.
2D exhibition design for Tangled Roots: How Grasses Shaped Our World, Auckland Botanic Gardens’ summer exhibition.
The premise is a good one: a single plant family has shaped human life more than any other. Wheat, rice, maize and sugar fuelled civilisations; grasslands produced horses, antelopes and early humans; and the entanglement continues in everything from cuisine to sport.
We drew those threads together across the exhibition. Visitors moved through a series of spaces, each with its own earthy colour theme, where rich photography and illustration worked alongside the 3D objects and the living plants on display.
Hands-on elements run through it. An interactive map invites visitors to place discs of grassland animals onto the world; a grass petting zoo lets them learn the differences between species by touch. Beyond the display house, a discovery trail leads out into the wider gardens — where Grassman, a living grass sculpture, wanders among the visitors.
