Abstract
The Patent Plants exhibition presents a care and signaling system for 18 houseplant varieties and explores the spatial and environmental conditions for their patentability. This system includes not only infrastructure for basic vegetal needs, but also a community of plant parents. Each patent plant on display here is under the care of a member from the School of Architecture. Visitors are encouraged to look at them through hand lenses and to draw them. As the anthropologist John Hartigan asserts in the essay “How to Interview a Plant,” drawing facilitates careful looking, which is the first step toward taking plants seriously.