The House that Learnt to Bloom

With ceramicist Charlotte Moore, participants will sculpt in clay to create botanical forms and imagine a hybrid plant designed to grow within the Veggery's unique architectural environment.

This is a free event open to the general public. Due to limited space, the event is ticketed. Children are welcome if accompanied by an adult.

..................................

Location:

The Veggery is located on St Giles Terrace adjacent to St Giles Church and the City of London School for Girls in the Barbican Estate. To find the Veggery, continue past the entrance to the church onto the open terrace – you cannot miss it!

What3Words: ///laying.earth.young

https://w3w.co/laying.earth.young

..................................

There will be six 1.5 hours workshops hosted over two days at the following times:

Wednesday 15th July 2026 – commencing at 11am, 12.45pm and 2.15pm.

Saturday 1st August 2026 – commencing at 11am, 12.45pm and 2.15pm.

..................................

Please wear clothes that you are comfortable getting a little scruffy in. All materials and tools required will be provided on the day.

..................................

Photography:

Please note that we may have a photographer present during this event. Photography captured may be used in our marketing and communications.

If you do not wish to be in any of the photos please let the photographer or a member of the team know.

..................................

Brief for the Workshop:

This workshop explores the reciprocal relationship between plants and architecture, how vegetation colonises and transforms built structures over time and how architecture itself creates new ecological niches that enable unexpected forms of plant life to emerge.

Beginning with historical examples – such as Richard Deakin’s studies of the Flora of the Colosseum of Rome, Joseph Gandy’s Rotunda of the Bank of England, Victorian hothouse culture and botanical gothic fiction such as John Collier’sGreen Thoughts – we will consider architecture not as a static backdrop for nature but as an active participant in ecological processes. Greenhouses, in particular, demonstrate how architecture produces artificial climates that allow species to grow beyond their native environments, fostering new botanical assemblages and forms of hybridisation.

This raises a contemporary question: how might architectural elements such as façades, ornament, ledges, cornices and niches move beyond surface decoration to become living environmental infrastructure? Rather than merely supporting plants, could they become spaces that actively cultivate biodiversity, provide habitat, and generate new relationships between species?

To translate these questions into a shared material experiment, the workshop shifts from discussion to speculative making. Over 1 1/2 hours, participants will be introduced to techniques for sculpting botanical forms, learning how to observe, abstract and combine plant morphologies through three-dimensional making.

Working collectively, the group will construct a large hybrid plant structure inspired by observations of the Barbican’s planting, the unique climatic conditions of the Veggery, and historical botanical imagery such as Erbario Herbal and Goethe’s concept of the Urpflanze. Rather than representing any single species, this collective sculpture imagines a plant adapted specifically to the Veggery’s architectural environment. A speculative organism whose morphology responds to ledges, cavities, façades and enclosed climates. Through botanical sculpture, participants will explore how architecture might become an active medium for cultivating new ecological futures, transforming ornament from surface decoration into living environmental infrastructure.

..................................

The Veggery is a free to use community greenhouse, learning space and urban growing project located on St Giles Terrace, within the Barbican Estate. Designed by Studio Folk Architects, the project was selected as the winning design in the Seeds in the City competition, organised by the London Festival of Architecture and Culture Mile BID in 2026.