Grow to be well

Enabling urban dwellers to become well through plant engagement

Currently, I call my sustainability related activities "Grow 2B well" project. The main goal of the activities is to address the wellbeing crisis, where both the planet and people living in it do not feel well. I strongly believe that one important aspect of how to tackle this crisis is by reconnecting with nature again, and creating novel connections among people and nature, with help of novel approaches to materials and technology.

Findings from horticultural psychology show how active engaging with nature has vast positive effects on people's physical and mental health. On the other hand, the actual relationship with nature many people have today is not very deep. People often suffer from so called "plant blindness", where plants are experienced as a green blur in the backgrounds, rather than something that plays an active role in our lives.

Sensing technologies host the potential to change this situation by enabling continuous data collection over time through sensors which are easily accessible. However, it cannot be done in a traditional way, where technology is seen as the solution to the problem. Instead, I believe the sensing technology and its design process can serve as a place to foster learning about nature, about oneself and about a more sustainable way how to live.

Critical companions

In this explorative more-than-human engagement, I am trying to develop an understanding of the human-plant relationship, especially of plant participation in human contexts. Some of you have probably met Stanislav already - if not check out Critical companions.

Critical companions

Knowing with plants

In this explorative more-than-human engagement, I am trying to develop an understanding of the human-plant relationship. Through a visual ethnographic study, I want to learn what we can learn from having plants at home; and how visual methods can help us foster our relationship towards the more-than-human world.

REBEL collective

A research program developed by the REBEL collective - a group of engaged researchers, designers and practicioners, who are passionate about re-imagining the future so that is for all. More information about the program at the university's website here. My activites within REBEL are summarized here.

I.N.S.E.C.T. summer camps

We are a collective focusing on multispecies design of our world. We develop our efforts mainly through a research summer campm, which takes place once a year at Hvalso. More information about the 2024 version here.

Embodied workshops

Although we live in what some call "cognitive capitalism", this does not mean we do not use our bodies to understand the world. Through a series of embodied workshops, I am trying to understand how to enable such embodied understanding especially in participatory design projects.

Plansors: Co-creating with plants and sensing technologies

Together with Sjoerd Hendriks and Mohammad Obaid (Chalmers University of Technology) we are currently organizing a series of workshops, where we are trying to find a novel way how to connect people and plants through plant care supported by sensing technology. More information here.

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