FT1404

A rose from the supermarket does not smell the same way as a rose from a private garden. This is because it is heavily engineered to adhere to the cut flower market requirements: a longer vase life, more vivid colour, and a straight stem that enables packing as many flowers in a cart as possible for optimised transportation. Scent was the first one to lose the race towards the ideal flower: it requires a lot of energy for the plant to produce it. To illustrate these codependencies, Marcin distilled three fragrances from roses collected in three different places: a supermarket, a flower shop and a garden. He presented the outcome during his Flowering Transition MA thesis project at the RCA in London in 2014.