At 135 million tonnes per year, bananas are the world’s most widely consumed fruit. But they also generate nearly 115 million tonnes of agricultural waste annually. From Plantation to Pavilion examines bananas through the lenses of species origins, migrations, and embedded traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), addressing their entanglement with histories of trade and land occupation. It explores repurposing banana waste as a building material, highlighting the resilience inherent in TEK as a counter to the ecological disruptions caused by industrial agriculture. From Plantation to Pavilion envisions a future where architecture and TEK foster equity, ecological balance, and sustainability.
Participants
CAMBRIDGE, USA
Zhicheng Xu, Chengdu, China, 1992. Lives and works in Cambridge and Charlottesville, USA, and internationally.
Kevin Mastro, Cambridge, USA, 1990. Lives and works in Cambridge, USA.
Technical collaborators
Jeremy Thorn; Chris Humphrey; Justin Hughes; Nathan Ehrlich
Team
Joshua Chiang; Jiayi Lily Li; Qile Gao; Fenghua Lin; Lehan Zhang
Thanks
Mengqi Moon He; Yang Xu; Tristan Durham; Jiahe Chen; Ralphie Xu; Nikola Kolarov; Whitney Walden; William Liu; Deniz Kantar; Anadaysi Lopez; Alice Bian; Faiza Hyder; Isabela Canavati; Vitoria Carneiro Zhu; Ghazal Torkamaniha; Sarai Huaman; Hyacinthus Zhang; Stuti Mehta
Supporters
Rice University Creative Ventures Fund; Rice University School of Architecture; Rice University Moody Center for the Arts; University of Virginia School of Architecture
