Designer Gionato Gatto’s assortment, Coloniae, is a collection of objects designed like dwellings inside a colony, their constructions conceived to work together symbiotically with crops. 

The objects are most likely finest suited to air crops (Tillandsia) as they don’t seem to include vessels for both soil or water, however the concept is noteworthy.

A set of variously formed vases and a desk, Colonaie hosts the crops, permitting the plant roots and leaves to intertwine themselves with the assist construction to turn into a single full unit. The desk is paying homage to French designer Frédéric Malphettes’s Floor which does double responsibility as each an indoor-outdoor modular desk system and a planter, or Norwegian designer Philipp von Hase’s seed formed “Plantable” a  desk with an built-in planter.

Unveiled at Milan Design Week 2022, Colonaie is a part of the design collective JCP Universe’s Different Lifeforms collection, whose idea is to create artifacts that “turn into life types of a system that creates relationships between its creators, customers and the atmosphere itself.”

Like Hong Kong designer Francois Hurtaud’s mixture aquaponic planter system and lightweight fixture, a contemporary piece of indoor furnishings, the Colonaie items aren’t merely containers for crops however reasonably objects that exist symbiotically with them.

Two vase designs, Munzo and Loum, and a small aspect desk are fabricated from perforated aluminum sheets with matt copper, matt bronze, or matt silver ending. The designs are made to order on JCP Universe’s web site.

Photographs through JCP Universe.