The landmark is the convention by which the cities are navigated, but the intervention of human behavior leads to the disappear of the plants’ territory because of the appearance of many buildings. Nature shouldn’t be just all manicured as buildings aren’t always be manicured. Therefore, the plant is the watermark of a city to inform the relationship between the city and the ground, the soil, the wetness and nature.
The drawing ‘Princes Street with the Commencement of the Building of the Royal Institution’ in the National Gallery of Scotland gives a vision that the city construction is no sort of steps out of the frame and into the city. City and nature is not in opposition, but in equal relations. In this case, the plants grow and expand by calibrating the wetness of the ground and the sky while the architectures are constructed to generate the city. Informed by the vegetal’s knowledge, the project is considered to learn from the echoing mimicry of the plant group. We people guide ourselves by building to building, monument to monument, statue to statue to manage the city, so the principle should also meander from tree to tree, flower to flower, pond to pond and garden to garden. By switching the scale, I see Prince street garden to be one of the forests in Edinburgh as Caledonian forest is the national flora of Scotland. Starting from the most primitive growth, the “seeds” of the project are buried under the ground of land-marks and grow into the carrier of the water-marks in which the plants continue expand by the regulation of the vegetal. So this project aims to sow a spatial network for both land-marks and water-marks by following the rule of the plants. It is a workshop for the vegetal to lead the people’s activities and for the human to study the co- existence with the plants. Time goes by, parts of the workshop with regenerated historical buildings are scattered throughout Princes Street blocks and garden. It is a persistent vision to see how city and nature interact with each other dynamically. This mutual game continues.
