Retail & Hospitality
Author Building
Lobby, co-working and lounge planting for a premium build-to-rent building — planted in vulkaponic volcanic medium for perfect moisture control.
Planting for the lobby, co-working and shared lounge spaces at Author — a build-to-rent building specified to the highest standards of finish, design and service.
Planting nobody owns
Build-to-rent is unusual: the shared spaces are the product. They are what a prospective resident walks through before signing, and what a current one walks through every day. The planting has to do two jobs that pull against each other — look considered enough to help let the building, and survive in rooms that belong to everybody and therefore to nobody.
Nobody waters a lobby plant because it is not theirs. That is the real design constraint, and it is a technical problem rather than an aesthetic one.
Volcanic rock instead of compost
The scheme is planted into vulkaponic — a volcanic rock growing medium rather than a compost. It holds water in the structure of the rock and releases it to the roots as they need it, then draws it away when they do not.
It is also completely peat-free, which a compost-based scheme of this size rarely is. Peat remains the default in commercial horticulture for reasons of cost rather than performance, and a building held to this standard of specification should not have several hundred litres of drained bog standing in its lobby.
What the volcanic rock buys in a shared space is tolerance. It flattens out both of the ways a lobby plant normally dies: the fortnight when nobody thinks about it, and the well-meaning person who empties a jug into it. The plant sits inside a much wider band of acceptable treatment than compost allows.
Three rooms, three jobs
The lobby planting works at arrival scale — seen from the door, in passing, at speed. The co-working space needs planting that divides without enclosing, so a desk feels separate without anyone feeling boxed in. The shared lounge takes the softest treatment, because it is the only one of the three where people sit still long enough to look closely.
Credits
Client: Author
Design: AGC BTR
Planting: Plant Drop
Plant consultant: Dom Butler
Planning planting into a fit-out? Talk to us early — the light survey is worth more before the ceiling goes in than after. See more projects or email projects@plantdrop.co.uk.
