Platinum Fine Arts and Art Installation Design · 2021
The Book That Grew Grazing Guide
- A' Design Award 2021 Platinum Winner in Fine Arts and Art Installation Design
- Awarded April 15, 2021
- CLIENT: Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 302,379
- Verification code 9B9200494B · Verify this award
About The Book That Grew Grazing Guide
The Book That Grew is a grazing guide made for farmers in Ireland. The book presents ten lessons and ten pieces of practical advice intended to improve sustainability and profitability. The ten steps guide farmers toward ten rotations of grass grazing each year and a yield of ten tons of grass per hectare. Each page, word and diagram was shaped by living grass roots, guided along channels over a growth period of several weeks. Complex farming processes are explained through bespoke symbols, and a fold-out page carries the symbol key.
The Book That Grew Grazing Guide by Fabiano Dalmácio stands as a remarkable achievement within contemporary bio-art practice, demonstrating how living materials may serve as vehicles for profound conceptual expression while maintaining extraordinary aesthetic presence; this sculptural work transforms the familiar cultural artifact of the printed book into a meditation on knowledge, growth, and humanity's relationship with natural systems through its innovative construction from actual root networks and living grass, the technical accomplishment evident in preserving the readable typographic elements while allowing organic matter to colonize and transform the conventional book form speaks to considerable material sensitivity and process mastery, compositionally the work achieves elegant balance between geometric text blocks and the organic proliferation of roots that envelop and integrate with them creating visual tension between order and natural entropy, thematically the piece appears to explore how ideas germinate and flourish suggesting that knowledge itself requires cultivation and care much as plants require tending, the textual content visible through the root matrix references environmental stewardship inviting consideration of how printed matter and natural resources interconnect, precedents for this approach may be found in arte povera's elevation of humble materials and more recently in artists working with living systems and botanical processes to create temporal and transformative works, the decision to photograph the object against absolute black isolates it as specimen and sculpture simultaneously elevating the humble root system to precious object status while emphasizing its emergence from darkness into visibility, viewers might contemplate their own relationship to both books and growing things considering how knowledge takes root in consciousness and what conditions allow wisdom to flourish.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This one-of-a-kind book contains 10 tangible lessons and 10 pieces of practical advice designed to help maximize sustainability and increase profitability. These 10 steps enable farmers to achieve a 'perfect' 10 rotations of grass grazing per year, and produce 10 tons of grass per hectare - a truly powerful number that will massively improve the sustainability of even the most efficient farm.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Book closed: A3 - 29.7 x 42cm
Book open: A2 - 59.4 x 42cm - Tags
- book, design, Ireland, grass, farming, bank
- Production Technology
- We used grass to grow a book. This is a genuine world first - with each page, each word, and each diagram shaped by real grass roots as they grew. Manipulated by a unique fusion of gardening and meticulous craft, the 'printing process' was fulfilled by nature itself - shaping the grass roots into legible symbols over a growth period of several weeks.
- Design Challenge
- This is a book that has completely come from grass itself. Designing for a root-based 'printing process' presented many challenges unique to this project. Every element from words to symbols to borders had to be inter-connected by channels for the roots to navigate. Complex farming processes were compressed into a bite-sized visual language of bespoke symbols, with the design of each individual glyph informed by the action or process it represented. A unique fold-out page allowed the reader quickly reference the symbol key while reading.
- Project Duration
- From October 2018 to May 2019, in Dublin and Amsterdam.
- Operation Flow
- Not only does this book lay out a practical plan of action, it symbolises the power of our natural resources. When grass is managed correctly, it can work wonders.
- Research
- The first step was to analyse the latest government reports and agricultural studies to identify the key areas of inefficiency in farming. Using the latest research and data on sustainability we isolated the 10 most effective methods of reducing emissions relevant to our target audience of Irish farmers. The application of each step was assigned a specific percentage of carbon savings, giving clear targets for farmers to reach, and a clear result that would translate into profitability through reaching these targets.
- Inspiration
- The roots of Ireland's economy are in agriculture, but if farming is to survive, it must become more sustainable. AIB, Ireland's largest bank for farmers, in partnership with Teagasc - the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority - wanted to enable farmers to maximize sustainability, by changing how they see our greatest resource: grass.
- Image Credits
- Photographer: Diana Scherer
Filmmaker: Jake Viramontez