How Green Is Your Garden

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Alicia was feeling bored. It was raining cats and dogs outside, and her elder sister Edith was impersonating Adult Edith, her nose deep in some ever-so-dry treatise on architectural history from father's library of ever-so-dry first editions. Alicia made the silent wish that her over-serious sibling's enunciation of the words 'entablature', 'neo-classical' and ' pilaster' would dry out the horrid wet weather so that she could search for disorientated felines and canines in the community garden downstairs. When it soon became clear that the wish would remain ungranted, she sighed and turned her attention to her decrepit toy rabbit... Follow the adventures of Alicia Liddell in 'How Green is your Garden?' as she mounts an expedition through the uncharted landscape of the family Victorian flat. Peering from beneath our heroine's flights of fancy lie questions of an ecological bent, focussing on the impact of the environment on architecture rather than architecture on the environment. Is it possible for buildings to learn from organic systems? And can the banal interactions of flora and fauna in the domes tic flat be scaled up into hybrids of growing edifices and engineered gardens of gargantuan size? Filled with doodles, recipes and otherworldly photo-drawings of imaginary green constructs, this kaleidoscopic record of Alicia's journey will delight.