Learning The Way Of Botanical Design Studio, This Humid House

The cult luxury botanical design studio This Humid House has a new offering of which impact lasts much longer than any of its idiosyncratic arrangements: workshops that share the wisdom and ideology that have made this six-year-old brand easily the most modern and in-demand of florists (and some might also say design innovators) here. True to its unconventional ways, participants of its inaugural course held in August were tasked to create large-scale installations for a fashion editorial in FEMALE. Here, company founder John Lim tells us more about this proverbial seed that he’s planting.

When This Humid House (THH) first came onto the scene in 2017, it immediately developed a niche with its focus on local (or locally sourced) materials and unorthodox arrangements and landscaping meant to challenge perceptions of floristry and, in turn, luxury. Six years on, how has that philosophy evolved – something I’d imagine is inevitable seeing how your business has scaled up as well as grown in response to the times?

“I think the largest evolution here has been in growing up! Now we know better when to put on our ‘designer’ hat and when to put on our ‘artist’ hat. We also know better that some things aren’t meant to be challenged – that brand stories are as personal to a brand as they are to people (and we should honour that). At the same time, we’ve solidified our ethos. We don’t have a style because style will and must evolve to be relevant, but we have an approach: We want our work to be meaningful to others, which means there is almost always an element of us engaging with culture. We are always local-first wherever we are because there is an irreplaceable authenticity that comes from connecting with the local climate and geography and, more than ever before, our designers are sensitised to leaving as light an environmental footprint as possible when we work.”

You ventured into conducting workshops in August 2023 with the two-day programme “Designing With Plants & Flowers” that was held in your studio in Singapore, and this month (Oct 12-14), you’ll hold your next in Paris jointly with the London-based florist Wagner Kreusch. Tell us more about this new development.

“Over the years, we’ve had many inquiries for workshops and we have only done a handful. We have never been comfortable with the arbitrariness of a themed workshop such as, say, a class on making a floral centrepiece without first establishing its place in a larger pedagogical framework that addresses why one would make a floral centrepiece in the first place. Today – after years of development – we have this framework in place as well as the people to support it: designers who from the get-go have been asked to speak about design in a way that equips them to one day teach it.

READ MORE: This Humid House Is Creating Even Dreamier Bouquets – And It Has Something To Do With Its New Garden

Learning to be a functional design team has perhaps been the best form of teacher training for all of us (at THH). We work in wildly subjective situations with plenty of strong personalities and we’ve had to develop very precise language around design development that is not personal… We’ve developed the awareness of when – and when not – to advocate an opinion and are able to recognise when something is a personal preference that should be stated as such and perhaps not imposed on. (And this is what our workshops aim to teach.) ‘Designing With Plants and Flowers’ was a course format that we will continue to explore with tweaks to the curriculum and different botanical installation challenges. It could also be conducted in different countries including possibly Beijing next year. This would allow anyone who attends the course more than once to build cumulatively on the pedagogy that we are developing as well as get a wholly different experience.”

Are you saying that the THH philosophy of botanical design can actually be taught?

“Yes, absolutely. We’ve developed pedagogy that is not dissimilar to what you might find in an art and design school. The framework is comprehensively thought-out so that even short courses cover a bit of history of botanical design. What’s perhaps a bit different is the emphasis on understanding the sensitivities that come with the subject matter. For example, how long something fresh lasts or what format it’s grown in will affect its usage and this needs to be considered right from the point of ideation. However, the foundation (of botanical design) is just like that of any design profession – from interior design to fashion! The key here is to always remember the ‘why’ and this forms the keystone of our philosophy, which can be applied anywhere.

And while all this sounds quite matter-of-fact, it’s taken us years to connect the dots and figure out the best way to impart this concept through structured programming in a way that’s easy to digest as well as to apply. (Our workshops) are still very much a work-in-progress, which is also why we always solicit feedback from our participants: so that we can continue to refine and improve our pedagogy. Being able to work with plants and flowers as we do is such an unspeakable joy so I’ve never wanted to keep it to ourselves. Over the years, we’ve instinctively and intentionally developed our team so that everyone expresses his or her own point of view as if he or she would one day be a teacher of our craft. This is the biggest leap forward in our evolution as a botanical design studio!”

Tell us a bit more about the inaugural edition of your workshop held in Singapore in August: What were the participants like and what was your intended outcome?

“We are so encouraged to have had the vote of confidence of participants from 10 countries – they came not just from Singapore, but also all the way from Vietnam, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. Seventy per cent of them were either professional florists or professional hobbyists who take their craft very seriously! It was also humbling and inspiring to have had florists with decades of experience attend – it made us think, what would we have to offer them?

READ MORE: A Day In The Life Of Botanical Designer Francoise Ozawa

Our intention has always been to share about approach and context, which goes back to the roots of why we do what we do. Our hope is that if a participant is able to grasp this foundation of understanding the ‘why’, he or she would be able to apply that thinking to any type of project… Despite the difference in their experience and backgrounds, everyone said they enjoyed the course and unanimously agreed that the opportunity to connect with likeminded people from all over the world was a precious one. We also had feedback from participants that our design approach was eye-opening and thought-provoking, and something they rarely experienced at the other workshops they’ve attended; and that we had worked with respect and maturity as a team of creatives during the programme. We could not have imagined a more positive outcome!”

Now share more about the brief and process that led to the botanical arrangements featured in the hero fashion editorial as well as the cover of FEMALE’s Oct 2023 edition.

“We started knowing that we wanted to work in our studio’s new conservatory space, which is a tall and narrow gallery. The design problem we had conceived (for the participants of our first workshop) put into practice what we taught throughout the course: the importance of understanding context and using that to shape the design approach; technical knowledge such as balancing colour combinations, selecting materials and textures; as well as hands-on floristry skills. We also wanted to provide the opportunity to work on a large-format hanging installation, which is not common day-to-day, but is one of our fortes as a design studio. The brief we gave: Create an installation for a fashion editorial for FEMALE, which meant that it had to be youthful, modern and edgy. Materials the participants could work with included dendrobiums and cymbidiums sourced during the nursery trip that was part of the programme; vibrant orange stargazer lilies; purple hydrangeas to add another punch of colour; and large graphic foliage such as philodendrons, anthuriums, coconuts leaves and baby coconuts that we harvested from our own garden.”

What do you think is missing in the industry – pedagogy-wise or otherwise – that would help in the development of botanical design here? And what do you think will help plug these gaps?

“I think it’s asking ‘why?’ – why work with plants and flowers in the first place? A lot of the time, most people only know that they would like a table centrepiece here and a backdrop there, but they may not give further thought around the reasons as to why aside from these being the familiar or standard way of (designing with plants and flowers). And I feel that’s where education for those practising floristry stops at: knowing how to put a centrepiece or backdrop together without deeper meaning. We kick off our workshop programmes by asking why participants are there, and we hear a lot of ‘I like plants and flowers’, or ‘I just want to learn more’, which is great, but we like to challenge people to think deeper. What sparked off their love of plants and flowers, and why did that lead to actual action to develop their skills further or even make a career out of it? I started This Humid House with the burning questions of why floristry in Singapore – despite its hot and humid climate – is designed in such a Western way, and why aren’t local and regional ingredients getting more love. Addressing these have been the North Star of our studio. Understanding the language of plants and flowers helps to make botanical design more meaningful.”

In the six years that THH has been around, how have tastes in and attitudes towards botanical design changed?

“I started working with plants and flowers in 2014 because I couldn't find a florist here who would be open to using fruits and vegetables for the arrangements for my brother’s wedding reception, and that led to the founding of THH in 2017. Today, there are dozens of florists, designers and studios creating extremely thoughtful work that has ushered the use of previously unconventional ingredients into the mainstream.

What have you and your team learnt from your first workshop that could influence what you do at THH?

“One of the popular comments from participants in that workshop was that it was very intense and that we had packed many things into the two-day programme (it included a visit to a plant nursery; topical mini lectures; working on arrangements and installations of various scales; and a dinner of which setting was to be styled by the participants themselves). The ask was to spread things out to give everyone time to absorb and process what we were teaching and upon reflection, we agreed to do so. Hence our second workshop that will be held in Paris in October is over three days instead of two, which was our original plan. We’ve also received numerous requests about upcoming workshops as these interested parties are from all over the world and would like to plan their travel schedules in advance. This definitely is something we’re starting to work on and we hope to release course dates for up to three months at a time.”

Photography Stefan Khoo Styling Damian Huang Photography Assistant Chong Ng Styling Assistant Danessa Tong Hair & Makeup Keith Bryan Lee, using Ouai & Gucci Beauty Model Keqing/Mannequin Set Special thanks to This Humid House

A version of this article first appeared in the Oct 2023 Wholesome! Edition of FEMALE