At our August meeting, we were pleased to feature Committee member Sarah Kenney, designer and researcher, whose work investigates the global cut-flower industry through an architectural lens. She holds master’s degrees in both architecture and landscape architecture and has presented her research internationally and published on the topic, showing how architectural analysis can reveal hidden social and political systems. Her talk, Conflict Bloom – Flowers Under Siege in Kenya’s Lake Naivasha Region, introduced the framework of Floritecture as an approach to examining the designed and controlled spaces of flower production. Informed in part by an early background in floristry, she brought a first-hand sensitivity to flowers as materials of design and labor. Drawing on her on-the-ground research in Naivasha, she showed how the lightweight construction of the greenhouses and the infrastructure of roads, power lines and water systems extend well beyond the farms into surrounding settlements. Houses have been built along these networks, making clear how production landscapes and material practices shape everyday life and exposing the contradictions of an industry where beauty and violence, empowerment and inequality coexist. Her presentation sparked an intensive discussion on the broader structures behind global trade, a theme that continues to engage the Committee. We thank Sarah for the unique insight she shared through her framework of Floritecture and her field research, which provided a distinctive perspective and illuminated how global supply chains shape social and material realities.