The professor wears the vest at an event where its crops were served as finger food.
Aroussiak Gabrielian has developed a “wearable garden.” It’s heavy and smelly and you probably wouldn’t want to wear it. That’s kind of the point.
Gabrielian is an assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture. The garden cloak is part of her speculative design project called “Posthuman Habitats,” aimed at getting people to think harder about the future of food production and waste.
The cloak, or vest, is fed and nourished by a person’s bodily waste, including sweat and urine. It can yield 20 pounds of edible crops in a couple of weeks and also serves as a habitat for tiny insects.
“It’s a really bizarre experience to be immersed in one of these,” the professor says. “The whole project is supposed to kind of awaken us and bring us into palpable and tangible contact with the climate crisis.
“It was meant to be uncomfortable, to make us realize the kind of extremes we might have to go to to safeguard our survival.”
Gabrielian has sported the vest at exhibits in Italy and elsewhere, and conceived the idea at the end of 2015, while pregnant with her daughter. “I had an idea that we could use our bodies to feed more than just our kin.”
In 2017, she received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and the vest literally came to life about a year later.
The basic components of the system are the garments themselves which can be stored on mannequins ... [+]
The professor explains that forecasts of catastrophic environmental conditions could mean there’s not enough land to grow the food needed to feed the world’s population in the future.
The wearable garden allows a person to grow food directly on their bodies, using green wall technology from Patrick Blanc, the inventor of the vertical garden. “There’s no soil needed,” Gabrielian explains. “It uses hydroponics to grow the plants,” with a vest made of seed-filled felt that retains moisture. The system takes cues from regenerative agricultural practices.
Forty different crops like fruits and vegetables have been grown on this odd fashion farm, including sorrel, cabbage, arugula, purple kohlrabi, broccoli rabe, radish, red leaf lettuce, frisee, green onion, kale, oak leaf lettuce, peanuts, peas, lentil, nasturtium, strawberries, mushrooms, leek, fennel, sage, rosemary and lemon thyme.
On exhibit in Rome
Where does she see this going?
Gabrielian isn’t planning a startup, but says she’s heard from scientists interested in taking the vest beyond a prototype.
“A lot of them want to see this. They want to put it toward reality a little more.”
She said she’s not sure how she feels about turning the vest into a product, and is instead focused on parts two and three of her doctoral work, spotlighting water and waste. “They’re not vests,” she says of parts two and three, “but they do engage the body.”
“Posthuman Habitats” is currently on exhibit in Beijing as part of “Human (un)limited,” a joint exhibition project of Hyundai Motorstudio and Ars Electronica.
Beans being grown during a testing and experiment phase of the project
