Until October 13, 2025, the installation The Hidden Plant Community at EXPO 2025 in Japan offers an immersive experience that allows you to live like a tree, through sounds and lights that reveal the secret life of plants. Designed by PNAT Project Nature by Stefano Mancuso, it combines art and science to raise awareness of the importance of plants and overcome plant blindness, promoting an empathetic and conscious connection with the plant world.

EXPO 2025 Osaka

Florence, May 5, 2025. A unique experience allows you to see the world from the perspective of a tree for the first time and to intuitively perceive what it means to live like a plant. The interactive installation,

The Hidden Plant Community, takes you to the heart of the Forest of Tranquility at EXPO 2025, Japan,

the excellence of Italian research in the pioneering field of plant ethology. Designed and created by PNAT Project Nature, the collective of scientists, botanists and designers founded by plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, this Community of Invisible Plants combines art and science to translate the secret life of plant organisms into sounds and lights. The goal: to finally allow the public to observe with their eyes and hearts the movements and functions of these living beings through the language of art, to abandon the anthropocentric vision of the world and grasp existence from a broader perspective.

CONNECT WITH THE WORLD OF PLANTS

What is the happiest way to live? To answer this question, Expo 2025 Osaka, from April 13 to October 13, 2025, has invited the international scientific community to discuss the theme Designing the society of the future for our lives through

a vision that extends to all forms of life, not just human beings.

The Exposition is held on the artificial island of Yumeshima, in Osaka Bay, and has as its centerpiece the circular building designed by Sou Fujimoto, built with zero impact and recently entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest wooden architecture in the world.

The Grand Ring symbolizes the union in diversity and the connection between living beings.

in a world shared by countless species. In the heart of the ring, the Forest of Tranquility, with 1,500 trees, invites us to look to the future from a biophilic perspective. Right here, Professor Stefano Mancuso of PNAT, together with a swarm of internationally renowned artists and scientists – Yoko Ono, Tomás Saraceno, Leandro Erlich and Pierre Huyghe – was invited to conceive a work of planetary importance, rediscovering the original spirit of Expo. The aim of the Universal Expositions, which have been held for 174 years, since 1851, is to unite the wisdom of the world to find solutions to common challenges.

GIVING VOICE TO THE INVISIBLE PLANTS COMMUNITY

The Hidden Plant Community installation makes the invisible visible, transforming the incessant work that plants silently perform every day into a tangible experience.

Taking the path, visitors enter a different dimension, among sound and light installations. The first experience, The sound of trees, transforms the sound waves of the raw sap that rises from the roots to the leaves into an acoustic and visual landscape. Eighteen hi-tech columns, in fact, create an artificial forest that brings to mind the pipes of an organ, for an auditory immersion among the voices of the plants. Six of these columns are equipped with directional speakers that allow you to enter a sort of sound chamber where you can listen to the sounds recorded by a geophone, a special device that can capture noises imperceptible to the human ear inside the trunk. The second work, The movement of stomata, is a kinetic installation that imitates the functioning of these “organs” through a set of pneumatic microstructures that open and close, to highlight how trees regulate the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide with the environment.

SOUND OF TREES REVEALED

Xylem, or the woody part of the trunk, is the plant tissue that transports raw sap, composed mainly of water and mineral salts, from the roots to the leaves. The cells of the xylem are comparable to microscopic tubes through which the sap is “sucked” upwards, like in a straw.

The experience The sound of trees highlights this function, amplifying the sound that is produced in the wood. The speakers placed in the columns therefore allow you to listen to what happens inside the trees.

STOMA MOVEMENT REPRODUCED

Stomata are microscopic “mouths” found on leaves, flowers and stems; each of them is made up of two cells. These openings allow the exchange of gases between the inside and outside of the plant, facilitating the entry of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and the release of oxygen and water vapor. The kinetic installation The movement of stomata is composed of six life-size, luminous and transparent structures, positioned vertically, which reproduce the leaf blades, with their organelles inside. The pneumatic elements of the work open and close during the day thanks to a temperature sensor, while they remain inactive at night, imitating the functioning of stomata.

“It’s not about automatisms, simple mechanical responses to external stimuli,” explains Professor Stefano Mancuso, a leading expert in plant intelligence and creator, 20 years ago, of the first chair of plant ethology at the University of Florence. “Unfortunately, we humans only understand what is similar to us and we imagine intelligence as the fruit of an organ like the brain, but these tasks can be entrusted to the entire body. Plants are simply different from us, but their evolutionary intelligence has allowed them to be among the longest-lived organisms on Earth.”

STEFANO MANCUSO: “LET’S GET OUT OF VEGETABLE BLINDNESS”

During the first panel discussion between the big names of the global cultural debate promoted by Expo 25, entitled Multicultural Resonance towards a Better Future, Professor Stefano Mancuso spoke in Osaka together with the scientist Hiroaki Miyata, the architect Sou Fujimoto, the art historian Yuko Hasegawa, the architect and performer Tomás Saraceno and the conceptual artist Leandro Erlich. The Italian botanist underlined how

humanity can no longer do without considering plants when designing the future. «Scientific literature has revealed how we people tend to “not see” the plants that surround us, perceived as a sort of inert “background” for our lives: this phenomenon is known as plant blindness

We have become accustomed to considering them as static elements, neglecting the incredible variety of vital actions they perform. This distorted perception can have very serious consequences on the environment and human health, because life on earth depends entirely on plants”, said Prof. Mancuso.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TREES

«Through photosynthesis, plants quietly consume carbon dioxide, release oxygen and transform sunlight into energy. Yet, even today, we consider them passive entities, devoid of the dynamism that characterizes their existence, or at most we use them as decorative frills. Without their contribution, life on Earth as we know it would not be possible. We are totally dependent on plants for everything, from the air we breathe to what we eat, to medicines, and yet we have cut down two thousand billion trees in the last two centuries, with a devastating effect on the Planet. It is our duty to work on this awareness, to make people recognize the primary role of plants in building a future for humanity.

THE ROLE OF THE PROJECT

The Hidden Community of Plants aims to create an empathetic and conscious connection with these living beings different from us using the language of art, to make their vital activities immediately perceptible to people”, concluded the founder of PNAT. Project Nature.

THE WORK OF PLANTS IN THE INTERIORS

Another important function performed by plants, namely their ability to autonomously create the environmental conditions best suited to their survival, is demonstrated by Professor Stefano Mancuso in Building Biospheres, the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale of which he is the curator together with the landscape architect Bas Smets.

THE VENICE BIENNALE

Furthermore, the scientific work of PNAT and the intelligence of plants are protagonists at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 (open to the public from May 10th to November 23rd 2025) with the Fabbrica dell’Aria Pavilion installation. In the pavilion, created inside the Corderie dell’Arsenale, the stand-alone plant bio-filtration device Fabbrica dell’Aria.2 designed by PNAT scientists for homes and work environments is presented for the first time.

PNAT PROJECT NATURE SRL

is a multidisciplinary research and design company, composed of architects, engineers and plant scientists, that promotes synergic relationships between the natural and built environment. Founded as a spin-off of the University of Florence by Prof. Stefano Mancuso together with the agronomists and botanists Elisa Azzarello and Camilla Pandolfi and the architects Antonio Girardi and Cristiana Favretto, it designs solutions to integrate plants into the city, buildings and objects of use, with an innovative approach to design and technology. Its multidisciplinary team also includes Karol Czarzasty, Giorgia Magrì, Marianna Pellin, Antonio Sarpato, Luigi Centini, Damiano Molena, Vanessa Panico, Fabio Giovannetti and Annalisa Zei. PNAT has two operational offices: in Florence, with the study unit connected to LINV and the University and in San Donà di Piave (VE), where the unit dedicated to applied research in biophilic design and ecosystem design operates.www.pnat.net

STEFANO MANCUSO,

professor at the University of Florence, is the founder of PNAT. Project Nature and LINV, the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology of the University of Florence and is one of the world’s leading authorities in this field that explores signaling and communication at all levels of biological organization. He has published more than 300 scientific articles in international journals. Among his essays and novels (translated into 27 different languages) The Trees’ Version (2024); Fitopolis, the Living City (2023), The Tribe of Trees (2022); The Plant of the World (2020); The Nation of Plants (2019); Discourse on Herbs. From Leonardo’s Botany to Plant Networks, with Fritjof Capra (2019); The Incredible Journey of Plants (2018); Plant Revolution. Plants Have Already Invented Our Future (2017), Botany. Journey into the Plant Universe (2017); Biodiversi, with Carlo Petrini (2015); Men Who Love Plants (2014); Bright green, sensitivity and intelligence of the plant world, with Alessandra Viola (2013).

Now on horseback! The work awaits us! Our new wonderful outdoor space is about to be born!

GOOD WORK and…if you have any questions, please write to info@mondodelgiardino.com

Image sources: thanks for the text and images of the Project to Studio Believe and expo2025.or.jp.