Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

The unwavering public interest in the pungent blooming of a “misshapen phallic giant” (Amorphophallus titanium) inspires reflections on the glass house as a place of encounter, where shared cultural histories are woven and the multi-species-network of urban co-creation is unveiled.

Paper long abstract

Summer 2025, Berlin’s botanic garden is celebrating the tallest single flower bloom in its history. Towering at 2,36m, the fully erect “misshapen phallic giant” (Amorphophallus titanium), or “corpse flower” (bunga bangkai), is a pungent spectacle of unwavering public fascination, haunting collective narratives of the global north since its introduction at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in 1889. As the loop closes and a diverse crowd’s gasps mirror those of their city-dwelling ancestors from another century, this paper invites its reader to reflect on the glass house as a place of encounter.

Since the dualistic and oppositional approach traditionally utilized when attempting to situate the human animal in a hierarchical pyramid of life (Plumwood 1993), led to a hyperseperation from the natural world that ties us to “the sixth great extinction crisis” (Hall 2011), the post-anthropocentric turn (Braidotti 2013) seeks different modes of reconnection. I suggest that the scope of the city, as a place inhabited and shaped by a pluralistic multi-species community, is unveiled through the encounter with – and experience of non-human personhood (Hall 2011) in meeting spaces like the botanic garden, thus uncovering contact zones (Haraway 2008) between different modes of life.

Shared cultural histories of human and plant life emerge as the theatre of glass encloses, highlights and facilitates sensorially engaging interspecies encounters, emphasizing the complexity of human cities as places of overlapping „Umwelten“ (Uexküll 1909) and realities. This paper traces these vines of connection and examines the prerequisites for their flourishing in an uncertain planetary future.