Crystal Garden is a family of faceted glass volumes designed by Alexander Kuiava as architecture for a single living thing — one tree, one bonsai, one bed of flowers. Each structure is a greenhouse reduced to its essence and cut like a mineral: amber, amethyst, obelisk, pine cone, talisman.
The smallest versions sit on a table indoors. The largest stand taller than a person and belong in a garden, on a park alley or at the centre of an urban composition. Today the whole family exists as engineering drawings — buildable, precise and available to anyone who wants to make one.
Role & Scope
- Concept & industrial design
- Geometry & structural drawings
- 3D modelling & visualisation
- Landscape & urban application
- Art direction
Project Facts
- 30 geometries, from tabletop to garden scale
- Available as DIY plans at Frontplans
- Grounded in constructive ecology & therapeutic horticulture studies
- Open to production, glazing and landscape partners
From screens to soil
“I spent fifteen years building immersive rooms out of light. Then I wanted to build one that was alive.”
The origin: an immersive space that grows
Crystal Garden began where the projection work left off. Years of designing immersive environments — rooms wrapped in light, facades turned inside out, audiences standing inside an animation — produced a stubborn question: what would such a space be if it were not projected but planted?
That question led Alexander Kuiava back to study. Alongside the visual practice he is completing a master’s degree in constructive ecology and landscape management, specialising in therapeutic horticulture — the discipline that treats a garden as an instrument of wellbeing rather than as decoration. Learning how planting, microclimate and human attention actually work reframed the design problem entirely.
An immersive room asks an audience to step inside. A Crystal Garden inverts that: the viewer stays outside and the interior belongs to a plant. The glass becomes a proscenium, the single specimen becomes the performer, and the surrounding garden or square becomes the auditorium. It is the same instinct for staged space, applied to something that keeps growing after the show ends.
30
Geometries drawn, from tabletop vitrines to garden structures
1
Living subject inside each volume — one tree, one bonsai, one bed
2
Scales developed — interior decor and garden architecture
A greenhouse built for one living thing.
Not a collection of plants under glass, but a single specimen given the attention normally reserved for a sculpture — and the shelter normally reserved for a building.
How a Crystal Garden is designed
Three decisions separate these structures from an ordinary greenhouse or a decorative geometric florarium.
Mineral geometry
Every shape in the family is cut from the logic of crystals rather than from the logic of sheds. Amber, Amethyst, Obelisk, Pine Cone, Talisman, Tulip, Dodecahedron — thirty faceted volumes, each with its own rhythm of planes and its own way of catching the sun. Because the facets are irregular, the light inside moves through the day instead of sitting still.
Glass that protects, not only decorates
Transparency is the obvious pleasure; shelter is the real function. A sealed faceted envelope buffers wind, frost, drought and pollution, which makes it possible to keep a bonsai, a tender flowering species or a small fruiting plant somewhere it would otherwise refuse to live. The vitrine is a microclimate with a view.
Designed to be lit
After dark the same object changes profession. Lit from within, a faceted glass volume becomes a lantern, and the planting inside turns into silhouette and shadow — the light-and-shadow vocabulary of projection work, transplanted into a garden. Integrated lighting is where a Crystal Garden stops being a container and starts being a landmark.
Right now the project exists as drawings — and the drawings are for sale.
Each geometry is published as a complete DIY plan: printable A4 blueprints with front, side, top and isometric views, dimensions and cutting patterns, in sizes for interior decor and for the garden. They are made for makers, glaziers and stained-glass workshops, and they live in the Frontplans florarium catalogue.
30 geometries
Interior & garden scales
Printable A4 blueprints
Glass · metal · stained-glass build
Where a Crystal Garden belongs
In a private garden the structure works the way a good sculpture works: it gives the eye somewhere to land. Placed at the end of a path, beside a terrace or against a stone wall, it organises the space around a single subject instead of adding one more planting bed.
Smaller versions work as geometric florariums indoors, on a terrace or in an entrance hall, where the glass keeps humidity in and dust out. The same geometry simply changes size.
This is the direction the project is aimed at. A garden-scale Crystal Garden on a rotunda, at the crossing of two park alleys or in the middle of a square reads as a public landmark — protected, legible from a distance and cheap to maintain compared with a pavilion.
Several units repeated along an avenue become a rhythm rather than an object, and lit at night they turn a dark park into a sequence of lanterns. For a city looking for a memorable, low-footprint intervention, that is an unusually efficient gesture.
A bonsai is a decades-long relationship, and it is vulnerable to exactly the things a glazed envelope moderates: wind, sudden frost, drying heat, city dust. The same is true of tender flowering species and small fruiting plants that would not survive an open bed at this latitude.
Therapeutic horticulture adds a second argument. A protected, framed plant invites people to stop and look closely — and sustained attention to a living thing is precisely the mechanism a therapeutic garden is built around.
The same faceted geometries are being developed as stage decoration under the name Kokon Stage: the edges of each volume carry LED strips, so the structure draws itself in light instead of holding a plant. It closes a circle that started with Polyform — modular geometry built to be lit.
One vocabulary, three states: cardboard for projection surfaces, glass for living things, light for the stage. Kokon Stage is in development and will be published as a separate project.
Open call
“The drawings exist. What I am looking for now is glass, steel and a park.”
Looking for partners to build it at full size
Crystal Garden is a design project in search of a workshop. The geometry is resolved and documented; what it needs next is fabrication in real materials and a real site. Alexander Kuiava is open to collaboration with production studios and metalwork shops, with glazing and stained-glass companies, and with urban planners and landscape architects looking for a distinctive, low-maintenance object for a park, a plaza or a private estate.
The interest runs in both directions. A manufacturer gains a documented, ready-to-produce family of thirty designs; a city or a landscape studio gains a landmark that protects a plant rather than replacing it. Enquiries about licensing, prototyping, commissions and site-specific versions are all welcome.
The project also continues a longer line of work. The faceted logic here descends directly from Polyform, and the fascination with light and shadow that shapes it comes from Video Mapping Loops — the same eye, working in glass instead of projection.
Crystal Garden FAQ
What is a Crystal Garden?
A Crystal Garden is a faceted glass structure built around a single plant — a tree, a bonsai or a flowerbed. Think of it as a greenhouse reduced to one occupant and shaped like a mineral. Small versions work as interior florariums; large ones stand in a garden or a park as architecture.
How is it different from an ordinary terrarium or florarium?
Scale and intent. A geometric florarium is a small vessel holding a miniature landscape; a Crystal Garden can stand taller than a person and is designed as a landscape object in its own right. The geometry is drawn from crystals rather than from boxes, and the largest versions are conceived for public space.
Why glass, and what does it do for the plant?
Glass gives refinement and protection at the same time. The envelope buffers wind, frost, drought and urban dust, creating a stable microclimate — which is exactly what a bonsai, a delicate flowering species or a small fruiting plant needs to thrive somewhere it otherwise could not.
Can a Crystal Garden be built today?
Yes, from the drawings. Every geometry is published as a complete DIY plan with dimensioned views and cutting patterns, printable on A4, in interior and garden sizes. Builders typically work in glass with a metal or stained-glass frame. The full catalogue is available at Frontplans.
Would it work in a park or on a public square?
That is the intended direction. Garden-scale volumes suit rotundas, park alleys and squares, either as a single landmark or repeated along an avenue. With integrated lighting they read as lanterns after dark, which makes them useful to urban designers looking for a low-footprint, memorable intervention.
Who is behind the project, and is it open to partners?
Crystal Garden is designed by Alexander Kuiava, a new media artist currently completing a master’s degree in constructive ecology and landscape management with a specialisation in therapeutic horticulture. The project is actively looking for production workshops, glazing companies, urban planners and landscape architects to build it at full size.
Give one tree
a building
of its own.
Thirty geometries, from tabletop vitrines to garden architecture, published as printable DIY plans and blueprints.
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