"In pursuing a study of "plants, buildings and us," Paul Dobraszczyk leads us through much of the western canon on this large subject, including Vitruvius, Leonardo, Goethe, Ruskin, and on through Joseph Rykwert's treatise on Adam's house in Paradise. More than this tour of luminaries, however, Dobraszczyk constructs his thesis through instances of "vegetal" architecture since the turn of the century, with chapters organized around the structure of a tree: Seeds, Roots, Trunks, Branches, Leaves, Flowers, and Canopies. Each section is amplified with examples such as Thomas Heatherwick's "Seed Cathedral" pavilion erected in Shanghai in 2010 (seed); David Chipperfield's 2014 "Sticks and Stones" exhibit in Berlin (trunk); Bolle Tham and Martin Videgård's 2010 "Mirrorcube" in a Swedish forest (branches); Patrick Blanc's "Living Wall" on the Athenaeum Hotel in London, installed in 2009 (leaves); and Grimshaw's bubble-like "biomes" for the Eden Project in Cornwall in 2001 (canopy). This is a thrilling read, and every reference sends one off on a search to learn more. A passage on rhizomes and allusions to anarchic growth evokes Lucien Kroll's "La Memé" student dorms in Louvain; a section on mimicry suggests the absurd "Palm Jumeirah" in Dubai.".