Meet The Artists Who Create Self-Sustainable Ecosystems In Glass Containers

As most humans are busily destroying the ecosystem with the various explorations and carbon emissions, Lina Cirilo and Laura Gonçales are creating small ecosystems. In 2013, the two women started a company that uses glass containers to produce and sell tiny self-sustaining ecosystems.

Their beautiful creations have almost everything you can imagine in ecology and a modern neighborhood. The serene tiny environment contains greens, camping sites, cars, and characters from popular movies like Harry Potter.

Lina and Laura’s works are purely handmade making each one unique in their own ways including how things are arranged.

How does it work?

As already stated, the ecosystems are self-sustaining, so you wouldn’t have to worry much about maintenance. All you need is to water them every 10 to 15 days depending on the prevailing weather condition. This makes it easier to keep, no matter how busy you are.

How the company started

Lina and Laura worked as architects but had a passion for artistic creation. They came up with an idea to help everyone have a piece of green closer to them. This idea gave birth to their beautiful creations. “We started with the proposal that people were entitled to a small piece of green. After all, we live in micro-apartments, work, walk the dogs, go to the supermarket, and suffer in traffic just to find friends. A mini-ecosystem that practically lives alone was more than necessary,” their website states.

The artists gifted some of their first gardens to family and friends, and the rest is history. Orders started flooding in, and that was the beginning of their company. They opened their first shop in 2014 at Galeria ComoAssim in Pinheiros. Sometimes, they use from a week to months to come up with a beautiful miniature garden.

On how they decide what to put in the pots, they said, “That depends. For personalized orders, we talk to the customer for days until we reach the point of meeting all their expectations. We paint all the miniatures by hand and create the scene the way they asked (within our means). But in general, we look at everything around us and try to replicate that in our terrariums.”