PLANT was one of three firms asked to participate in the 2004 Interior Design Show in Toronto. In response to the question “What Makes You Wealthy?” PLANT designed Conversation Piece—an installation that, like a conversation, is a fluid architectural concept, alluding to both the inside and outside. 

The piece is a porch looking on, a dining pavilion in a forest, a mediaeval banquet hall laden with banners of fabric, or a loft interior with a dramatic dining installation. A small palette of materials was used to sculpt a rich visual and tactile indoor/outdoor experience including wood, fabric, plaster and light.  During an era when the complexity of the global economy breeds architectural responses of complexity, instability, formlessness, contradiction and digital intensity, we seek to offer the opposite—calm, balance, simplicity and true interactivity. Taking the time to appreciate a single pebble, spoon or old postcard can be genuinely enlightening; however, it increases tenfold when you can share your wonder with someone else.

Conversation Piece’s 21-foot-long table and benches provide a place for gathering, eating and talking with family and friends. Packed tightly with drawers, it acts as a table, sideboard and vessel for memorabilia of past conversations—a container of conversation pieces, a repository of experience and an initiator of the ritual of conversation.