Eat Your Forest, Taste Garden

BACKGROUND The 'Eat Your Forest, Taste Garden' was an immersive, feature garden within the 'Doors' installation, exhibited at Singaplural 2016 - the Singapore Design Week annual anchor event. The work was conceptualised as an apartment overgrown by vegetation and featured traditional food and medicine plants. Prescott was selected as design team leader following a competitive expression of interest process through SILA (Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects). CONTRIBUTION The 'Doors' installation incorporated five curated spaces - representing our five senses - within a maze of doors recycled from Mediacorp production sets. The 'Taste Garden' explored the relationship between people and nature within Singapore's heavily urbanised environment, researched through a study of local knowledge and customs concerning plants and their uses. In the rooms of the 'apartment', edible and medicinal plants were located to suggest use, such as plants to ease stomach complaints and throat infections in the bathroom. This work evidences Prescott's ongoing contribution to the landscape architectural discourse regarding the socio-cultural dimensions of landscapes and living environments, specifically the changing relationship between people and nature in Singapore as a result of increasing urbanisation. SIGNIFICANCE The Doors installation was a collaboration between Mediacorp, IDCS (Interior Design Confederation Singapore), SFIC (Singapore Furniture Industries Council) and SILA. This association with prestigious partners evidences esteem, alongside the competitive selection process that determined the teams undertaking the design work. Singaplural 2016 reached an audience of close to 28,000 visitors and received extensive media coverage with images of the 'Taste Garden' appearing in 'Lookbox Living' and 'Home Decor Singapore'.