The Art of Architectural Grafting

Jeanne Gang, one of America’s most distinguished contemporary architects, proposes using the ancient plant-cultivation technique of grafting in architecture and urban design as an effective way to address the pressing issue of climate change. Grafting is the biological process of connecting two separate living plants so they can grow and function as one. Motivated by both human need and desire, it is an ancient practice that continues to be performed today in search of more fruitful, palatable, and resilient varieties of plants. Grafting is also an incredibly useful and untapped paradigm for how architecture can begin to cope with climate change on a larger, more impactful scale, because it is predicated upon the building fabric that we already have. Grafting can become a term that informs architecture and its many scales, provoking the imagination while simultaneously lending know-how to tectonic, programmatic, formal, and regenerative adaptations.