ABSTRACT
This visual essay discusses Plants in Pavement, an ongoing study across the arts and asphalt, plant, and soil sciences that challenges the reliance on large-scale industrial technology to redress the ecological failings of built-environment infrastructure. Here, annual and biennial root vegetables initiate a process that strategically breaks up and greens pavement to increase water penetration, surface cooling, and the restoration of soil health. With a recognition that these underutilized spaces remain socially embedded, the effort is particularly sensitive to how plants growing in asphalt can stereotypically signal broader disorder, indifference, and even failure. The project takes the form of site-specific patterns, informed by specific conditions of interiority, to indicate these are spaces of care, rather than neglect, and continues to consider how the types of vegetation, maintenance, and fracturing inform how people organize around each individual site. The essay highlights the potential for applying elements we associate with interiors to the public outdoor space, but in contexts and at scales we do not regularly encounter.
