The lines between home, work, and play are blurred in our modern, technologically-connected world, yet the connection between home and nature is more fractured than ever. To mend this divide and satisfy our basic need to connect with nature, how can we think differently about design, material choices and building methods to better incorporate nature into our homes in a productive way? 

To respond to this question, Victoria Taylor Landscape Architect // VTLA Studio collaborated with VFA and Hummingbird Hill Homes to create this year’s IDS Concept House. RESET Home presents a multisensory experience of the future of living and an exploration of the role that our homes can play in improving our overall well-being. The team explores how materials, textures, sounds, scents, and light affect the mind and body and ultimately impact the way we live and interact within the private sanctuary of our homes.

Inspired by the dynamic character of living systems, VTLA Studio presents a series of garden ‘punctures’ and gradations of colour and contouring as biophilic gestures to draw attention to how we might reset our modern relationship to nature, so that green spaces are no longer ‘someplace outside’, but rather, immersed in how we live in our homes and shared landscapes. 

These conceptual moments celebrate a new role for landscape in our homes and urban spaces that push plant material beyond its typical role as superficial, aesthetic gestures of nature, to become integrated, place-specific infrastructural elements that improve the function of adjacent architecture and enhance the experience of all of our senses. By blurring the line between inside and outside, aesthetics and infrastructure, VTLA has added exploratory layers to the meaning of “home”.  By directly embedding plants into residential architecture, we can positively impact our physical and mental health and create new experiences of light, sound, colour, and texture.

Photos of the completed installation by Scott Norsworthy.