Bad Idea of the Week

This interesting product appeared last week from Inhabitat, consisting of small squares of grass for your desk or home. "These grass squares were designed at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel, in 2009 as a way to combine nature and architecture." While a laudable concept in theory, the idea of bring in grass as a landscape component into buildings as a way to combine 'nature' into the environment is pretty misguided and downright funny to me.


:: image via Inhabitat

There's a very vital way to include nature in buildings - called indoor plants, which actually provide benefits well beyond our monocultural lawn counterpart such as increased humidity, purification and removal of pollutants, and are much more beautiful than lawn. Plus, where does it end, when you end up having to buy a small lawnmower and trimmer, then continually spend weekends watering, fertilizing, and applying herbicide to keep your desk neat and groomed to stay within cultural expectations of care. :)